Many users mentioned that there is sometimes the need to open a file which is encoded in e.g. Chinese Big5 or in Japanese Shift-JIS. The TextMate manual recommends in respect to that topic to use the UNIX command 'iconv'. It works perfectly, but if you have to open many files of different encodings the typing of such commands will become a bit uncomfortable.

To make it a bit easier I wrote with the Bundle Editor a new template called openEncodedFile based on CocoaDialog's features.

Here is one way to use my suggestion:

- open the Bundle Editor - Show all - go to the folder 'TextMate' (or whatever) - add a new template 'openEncodedFile' (or whatever) Template data - Extension: leave it empty - Command(s):

# open CocoaDialog's file select menu file=$(CocoaDialog fileselect \ --title "Open an encoded file" \ --with-directory $HOME/ \ ) # check for valid file if [ -n "$file" ]; then # open CocoaDialog's dropdown menu # for more encodings add them to '--items' # to list all possibile encodings use the Terminal with 'iconv -l' res=$(CocoaDialog dropdown \ --title "Open an encoded file" \ --text "Choose the encoding:" \ ??exit?onchange \ --button1 "Open" \ --button2 "Cancel" \ --items "BIG5" "EUC-TW" "GB2312" "SJIS" "EUC-JP" "KOI8-R" \ ) # if user canceled exit [[ $( (tail -r <<<"$res") | tail -n1) == "2" ]] && \ exit_discard res=$(tail -n1 <<<"$res") # add more 'elif' according to '--items' if needed if [ "$res" == 0 ]; then ENC="BIG5" elif [ "$res" == 1 ]; then ENC="EUC-TW" elif [ "$res" == 2 ]; then ENC="GB2312" elif [ "$res" == 3 ]; then ENC="SJIS" elif [ "$res" == 4 ]; then ENC="EUC-JP" elif [ "$res" == 5 ]; then ENC="KOI8-R" fi # start conversion to UTF-8 and send the result as a new file back to TM iconv -f "$ENC" -t utf-8 "$file" > "$TM_NEW_FILE" fi

- Output: Insert as Text - Activation: Key Equivalent shift+option+o (my suggestion) - Scope: leave it empty

I've chosen a new template because the used keyboard short-cut is also available if no document is open.

As you can see in the script you can add/edit encodings very easily. (More details within the code)

If you start that bundle (shift+option+o) you will see a file choose menu. Select your file and press ENTER or 'Open'. Then you will be asked to input the right encoding. The available encodings are listed in a drop-down menu. Select one encoding and press ENTER or 'Open'. The script will convert your file according to the selected encoding to utf-8. The result will be shown in a new document.

Hopefully the very tiny script is useful for others as well. Feedback is highly welcomed.

Many greetings,

Hans-Jörg Bibiko

PS TODO: Include an automatical encoding detection. Hopefully coming soon ;)

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