View source for Character encoding

A character encoding describes how to interpret data outside the very limited range of ASCII.<br />
It is recommended to use '''UTF-8''' (Unicode) for maximum portability.

Incorrect character encodings render text obviously wrong, misinterpreting a single multi-byte character as several ASCII characters. For example, compare {{VLCSourceFile|AUTHORS}} versus [https://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=blob_plain;f=AUTHORS;hb=HEAD AUTHORS without UTF-8 support]. Character encodings are particularly important for [[subtitles]] and configuration files.

Windows Notepad defaults to Windows-1252* for all new documents ([https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-notepad-is-getting-better-utf-8-encoding-support/ though this might be getting better]) leading to potential misinterpretation by other programs. To save a Notepad document in UTF-8 hit <kbd>Ctrl+Shift+S</kbd> to bring up a dialogue or use a free third-party editor like [https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ Notepad++].

<small><nowiki>*</nowiki> Windows might incorrectly call Windows-1252 ''ANSI''</small>

[[Category:Glossary]]