TextEncoder

Change Log

On this page, you can find the history of changes made to the program TextEncoder.

• New Language (2024-08-21): Türkçe (Turkish).
• Automatic File Detection (2024-07-29): Improved recognition performance of Windows ANSI over other 8-bit encodings.
• Automatic Sorting (2024-06-03): In the sorting settings of the file list (context menu > Columns > Sorting) you can now define a column and a sorting direction according to which the files are automatically sorted after they are added.
• New Line Break Types (2024-05-21): EBCDIC Require New Line (RNL), EBCDIC Line Feed, ATASCII End Of Line (EOL), Group Separator (GS), Record Separator (RS) and Unit Separator (US) as further selectable line break types for reading and saving files.
• Sorting Settings (2024-05-15): With the new sorting settings for the file list, you can now determine the sorting algorithm used (alphabetical sorting, natural sorting, system algorithm or random order) as well as specify whether the upper and lower case writing should be ignored when sorting and whether the existing order of the other columns should be maintained. You can find these new options by right-clicking on the file list under "Columns > Sorting".
• Inverse Filename Search (2024-03-07): Also the file name search can now be reversed. If you put a minus sign in front of your search term, all files that do not contain the search term will be found. If your search term starts with a minus sign, you can search for "/-word" to make the minus sign lose its meaning. If you only want to search for a minus sign itself, it is sufficient to search for "-" without "/". To exclude multiple search terms, you can write "-abc/def/ghi" (only finds filenames that do not contain "abc", "def" or "ghi").
• Text File Filter (2024-03-06): Performance improvements of the filter "Text Files Only".
• File Search Filter (2024-03-03): Multiple search terms for the name can now be defined by separating the individual search terms with the character / (for example "name1/name2"). Also multiple file extensions can now be separated with the same character (for example "ext1/ext2/ext3"). The character / has the advantage that it cannot appear in a file name itself and has no special meaning within the wildcard search or the search with regular expressions, so that this character can be used as a unique separator. With the new option "Total Text must match", the entire file name must match the specified text or regular expression to be found. If this option is disabled, the text or regular expression only needs to appear somewhere in the file name. For script controlling the TextEncoders, the parameter "filter-name-matchall" has been introduced for this new option.
• File List Import (2024-02-02): In addition to text files with line wise file paths, the file list import function now also accepts files in the formats CSV, TSV, XLSX, ODS, HTML and DIF. This makes it possible to reload the files from a file list saved in one of these formats, for example coming from the FilelistCreator.
• Deactivation of the Warning Message (2024-01-31): With the option "Encoding > Show warning" you can now activate or deactivate the warning message and examination whether all characters contained in the file can be saved with your chosen encoding. Previously, the check and warning was always active.
• New Language (2024-01-27): Български (Bulgarian).
• New Encoding Format (2023-11-03): Code Page 437 (CP437, IBM437, OEM-US) as further encoding for reading and writing files.
• Window Positioning (2023-11-01): With the new option "Settings > System Integration > Always on Top" you can keep the window of the TextEncoder permanently in the foreground above all other program windows.
• New Language (2023-10-17): 日本語 (Japanese) in the versions for Windows, Linux and macOS..
• Display of the Encoding in the File List (2023-09-13): If a text file does not contain a byte greater than 127, the encoding of that file will now be shown as "US-ASCII/UTF-8" in the file list. Reason: Texts saved as UTF-8 without a byte order mark, which do not contain any characters outside the ASCII range, do not differ from pure ASCII texts at the byte level. Previously, only "US-ASCII" was displayed for such files in the file list as the lowest common denominator, which confused some users who expected "UTF-8" instead. To avoid this confusion, now both encodings are indicated. This change only affects the information in the file list and has no effect on the internal processing of the files.
• List Properties (2023-09-07): The dialog "List Properties" now shows the overview either grouped by file types or by file extensions. A new column "Percentage" has been added and the lists can now be copied to the clipboard as text, CSV or TSV using buttons.
• File Handling (2023-06-16): Improved handling of files without extension.
• Position Storage (2023-06-09): Improved storage of the last window position in environments with more than one monitor.
• Size Storage (2023-06-06): Improved storage of the program window size, the column widths and the program layout under high DPI conditions.
• New Function of the File List (2023-04-25): Via the context menu of the file list (right mouse button) and the new menu item "Remove Binary Files", you can remove all binary files from the file list so that only editable text files remain.
• New Filter (2023-02-27): If you prefix the filter for the file extensions with a minus sign, only files with a different file extension than the specified one will be found. For example, the filter "-csv,xml" excludes all files with the formats CSV or XML.
• New Function of the File List (2023-02-26): Via the context menu of the file list (right mouse button) and the new menu item "List Properties", a summary overview of all files in the file list broken down by their format can be displayed.
• New Option of the Storage Options (2023-02-05): Keep date of the original file, configurable via the graphical user interface as well as the new parameter "date=keep" for the script control.
• New Function of the File List (2023-01-24): Copy file paths to the clipboard (so far it was only possible to copy files into the clipboard).
• Adjustments of the User Interface (2022-10-22): Adjustments of the program windows and dialogs for an improved display under high-dpi resolution conditions.
• New Placeholders (2022-08-06): With the parameter "info" for showing file information via script, now also the placeholders of the TextConverter for the file name, the folder, the file size and the date can be used.
• System Integration (2022-07-31): Possibility to integrate the TextEncoder into the "Send to" context menu of the Windows Explorer in order to open files and folders with files in the TextEncoder for editing directly from the Explorer by right-click. You can find the option in the menu "Settings > System Integration > Context Menu".
• New Parameter (2022-07-21): With the new parameter "info" for the batch version of the TextEncoder, you can show information about the passed file in the console. Via this parameter, a string can be passed containing arbitrary characters and the placeholders %enc%, %bom%, %encbom%, %lb%, %lines%, %chars% and %words%. Example: TextEncoder -cl file.txt "info=%enc% %lb% - %words% words"
• Settings Files in Batch Mode (2022-05-23): In addition to the previous control of the batch mode of the TextEncoder via parameters, now also usual settings files can be passed as parameters that can contain all settings from the graphic user interface. The setting files can be combined and overwritten with all of the conventional parameters.
• New Column (2022-05-22): With the new column "First Characters" you can display the first characters of the files in the file list.
• Line break on multiple Characters (2022-03-09): Possibility to define a list of several different characters or character combinations at which all, the line is wrapped. The definition of the characters can be done in the form of text or code points. With this option, it is possible to use the TextEncoder to normalize files with a mixed line break type (for example, if a file contains both CR and LF line breaks) to files that only have one single line break type after conversion.
• Custom Character for Line Breaks (2022-03-08): In addition to the preset characters for line breaks, freely definable custom characters can now be defined as a character for a line break, too. The characters can be defined both as text and as codepoints. A line break can consist of one or more adjacent custom characters.
• Fixed Line Length (2022-03-07): In addition to the use of characters for line breaks, it is now also possible to define line breaks through a fixed number of characters per line. With this, the TextEncoder can be used to convert files with fixed line length into files with any other line break type.
• Verification on unsupported characters (2022-02-22): Before saving a file in a specific encoding, it is now automatically checked whether all characters contained in the file can be stored with the selected encoding. If not, a corresponding warning message is displayed (only during operation via the graphical user interfaces, not when called via command line or script).
• New Line Break Type (2022-02-14): In addition to the vertical tab (U+000B), now also the horizontal tab (U+0009) can be used as a character for a line break (read and write).
• Settings (2022-01-17): To reduce the size of the settings files, only those settings are stored, which deviate from the default settings.
• New Parameter (2021-11-05): With the new parameter keep-subdirs for the batch version of the TextEncoder, it can be controlled whether or not the old folder structure should remain in the new folder or not if files from a folder with subfolders are converted and stored in a new folder.
• New Keyboard Shortcuts (2021-07-27): CTRL+O (Add files), CTRL+D (Add files from folder), CTRL+E (Export file list), CTRL+I (Import file list), Shift+CTRL+W (Remove all files from the file list), Shift+CTRL+S (Convert all files from the file list) and ESC (Quit program).
• State Storage (2021-07-21): Storage of the state of the collapsible interface elements if the option "Save Window Size and Window Position" is enabled in the settings.
• New Option (2021-05-18): Save only in case of a change - If this option is active, only those files from the list are saved (overwritten or as a new file) that are different from the original file.
• Language Detection (2021-05-03): Improvement of the automatic language detection of the system language when starting the program.
• RTL-GUI Optimization (2021-04-14): Optimization of the settings container, the storage options, the dialogs and the general program layout for languages written from right to left.
• New Language (2021-04-12): اَلْعَرَبِيَّة (Arabic).
• Encoding Detection (2021-04-04): Improved automatic recognition of text files with the encodings UTF16-LE, UTF16-BE, UTF32-LE and UTF32-BE without byte order mark.
• Wildcard Search (2021-03-30): In addition to the search with regular expressions, the filter for the file name and the file extension now also supports simpler wildcard searches with * (any series of one or more characters or no character) and ? (single character).
• Remove nonexistent Files (2021-03-21): New option in the pop-up menu of the file list, which can check whether the files in the file list still exist or, for example, have been deleted or moved after being added.
• Search Folders (2021-01-19): Improved dialog control when adding files from multiple folders.
• Multiple selection of Folders (2021-01-14): In the dialog for adding files from folders, with the CTRL key pressed, several folders can now be selected, searched and added at the same time.
• New Keyboard Shortcuts (2020-12-23): You can use DEL to delete all selected files, Shift + DEL to delete all files not selected and CTRL + DEL to remove all files from the file list.
• File Properties in Filelist (2020-11-10): Live update of the file properties when converting.
• Collapsible Storage Options (2020-10-22): The storage options can now be collapsed. This allows the program to be used better on smaller screens.
• New Language (2020-02-24): Polski (Polish).
• New Language (2019-12-06): Русский (Russian).
• New Language (2019-12-01): 简体中文 (Simplified Chinese).
• Export and Import of the File List (2019-07-31): The file list can now be exported as file. The exported file can be imported in this or other programs again.
• New Parameters (2019-03-17): New parameters for the batch version to force the read-in format (enc-read and lb-read), to control the save options (save, save-folder, save-name and save-ext), to filter the files from folders (search-subdirs, filter-ext, filter-name, filter-name-matchcase, filter-name-regex, filter-hiddenfiles and filter-onlytextfiles), to delete the original file (delfile), and to open the converted file (openfile).
• New Languages (2019-03-13): Español (Spanish) and Français (French).
• New Program Version (2019-03-13): New free program version TextEncoder Basic with limited functionality (only 10 files can be edited at the same time).
• Custom Columns (2018-12-07): Custom columns can now be defined in the file list (via right-click or settings menu).
• Selected Files (2018-04-12): Ability to edit only the currently selected files from the list (mark files in the file list, then click on Convert).
• Column Width (2018-04-12): The width of the columns of the file list can now be saved.
• New Formats (2018-03-16): Latin-1 (ISO 8859-1), Latin-2 (ISO 8859-2), general Windows Codepage, Windows-1250 (Central European), Windows-1251 (Cyrillic), Windows-1252 (Western European) and Windows-1253 (Greek).
• Forced Encoding and Linebreak (2018-03-13): In addition to the automatic recognition of the encoding and the line break, files can now also be read in with a user-defined coding and line break.
• New Columns (2018-03-09): Display of encoding, line break and preview in the file list.
• Storage Options (2018-03-07): Extension of storage options (overwrite, save as new file, change folder, name or file extension).
• Change of the Linebreak Type (2018-03-03): In addition to the encoding, the TextEncoder can now also change the type of line break used for text files.
• Improvement (2015-02-01): Improvements for multi screens.
• New Parameter (2013-02-13): New parameter for the batch version: Now, you can pass the path to a directory as a parameter to convert all files from this folder.

Note: Minor changes, such as updating an existing program translation or fixing a bug, are typically not included in this list. Therefore, if you find a newer version of the program in the download area than the most recent date in this list, we have typically made such a change to the program.