[Github-comments] [geany/geany] fails to open Microsoft UTF-16LE file (MSO Word CUSTOM.DIC dictionary file) (#1238)

[Zenaan Harkness]

Microsoft office/ MS Word (all versions) saves its custom dictionary spelling word lists in a text encoding that Microsoft Windows calls UTF16 or UTF-16, but which is more specifically described as UTF-16LE or "little endian", as distinct from UTF-16BE or "big endian".

Geany 1.28 for Windows "(built on or after Jul 10 2016)", running on Windows 10, fails to open this file type (right click menu, or start Geany, and "Open").

I've tried choosing both File Encoding "UTF-16LE" and "UTF-16BE", as well as "auto detect", and tried "Set file type" to "detect from file" and "none".

In all cases I've tried, Geany fails. With UTF-16LE, the failure manifests in the error:

12:40:12: The file "C:\tmp\CUSTOM.dic" is not valid UTF-16LE.

and in the case of choosing UTF-16BE, the failure manifests as improper display/loading of the file - instead of a word per line, there is an endless series of long thin square rectangles on a single line.

So I go back to using Notepad++ or Akelpad... at least for the time being.

I suspect that the problem is Microsoft inserting BOM or "Unicode byte order mark" character into the file, and even though I manually specify file encoding and file type, Geany does some sort of auto detection thing, which it should NOT do when I manually choose the settings - even a bad rendering of a file (with my "bad" encoding choices") would be better than Geany completely FAILING to open the file at all!

Geany should have an option to "preserve BOM character" (in fact, should do this automatically), and should also have an option to "load file with my chosen encoding and filetype, even if Geany detects something not quite right"!!

Don't treat all users as stupid idiots! It makes your software look like a self conceited prig.

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https://github.com/geany/geany/issues/1238
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