Change File Encoding

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I brought a UTF-8 file over from Texshop (plain text) to Scrivener.
Certain characters, the usual suspects—em dashes, apostrophe’s—yielded nonsense characters in Scrivener.
Even though I thought Scrivener defaulted to UTF-8, apparently not.
Nor can I figure out a way to change the file’s encoding.
This answer
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/mmd-and-latex-giving-utf-8-errors/33172/2
presupposes a Tools=>Options menu item in Scrivener. I don’t see it in the Mac version.
Export/Import options are in Preferences, but I can’t find an encoding option. Anywhere.
I will be exporting the file back to (hopefully) a UTF-8 text file.
How can I change the encoding of the Scrivener file to UTF-8?

2

Those are referring to instructions in the Windows version, which does have a text engine capable of specifying the encoding. The Mac version only uses UTF–8, so it is more likely the file you have isn’t what you thought it was. I have noticed TeXShop has some issues with encoding. For example if I save a plain text file using its default settings (presumably Windows Latin 9), I get a file that nothing will load correctly, not even TeXShop. The settings that work best for me are:

  • In the “Source” preference tab: set Encoding to “Unicode (UTF–8)”.
  • When saving a file, make sure “Unicode (UTF–8)” is set. I don’t think the format matters so much, that just changes the extension which is arbitrary for text.
3

This is the first instance of Windows Scrivener having greater functionality than Mac Scrivener.
Texshop is already set to UTF-8. But in a copy and paste through the OS, who knows what is happening?
Perhaps MacOS Roman is getting in the way…

4

Copy and paste—I was thinking purely through saving as files. Hmm, well it seems to be working fine for me. I would make sure you are up to date. I’m using TeXShop version 3.85.

To test the TeXShop output use the command-line with the following command:

pbpaste > ~/Desktop/test;file ~/Desktop/test

You should get “test: UTF–8 Unicode text” as a result, and if you open the “test” file with TextEdit it should look fine—and if you “Save As” from TextEdit, the offered encoding should be UTF–8.