ASCII Files
ASCII files have been the traditional input and output GeoSurvey format for numeric and text data
All .acs, .txt, .lst, .tem, .xml, .mst files are ASCII files.
You can edit the file with any text editor. See Text Editors.
Do not edit it with Microsoft Word!!!!
ASCII files are defined as having one character per byte using the American Standard Character Set
They can also be known as ANSI files, however they all have one charcter per byte.
UTF Files
Other formats used frequently by internet web pages are:
- UTF-8 multi byte - characters can occupy 1,2,3 or 4 bytes
- UTF-16LE - characters occuply 2 bytes. This is a common format for Windows files
- UTF-16BE - characters occupy 2 bytes
- UTF-32LE - characters occupy 4 bytes
- UTF-32BE - characters occupy 4 bytes
These formats can support text in non English/American languages and so are becoming the standard format for web pages.
GeoSurvey can read these formats in some options but converts all characters to one byte - truncation.
This can result in loss of data, mainly for text characters (e.g. chinese characters)
Most data managed by GeoSurvey is numeric (co-ordinates) and so this may not be a problem for most users
For more info see the Wikipedia entry for 'UTF-8'
UTF Files in GeoSurvey
GeoSurvey can handle UTF files in the following Options:
- Import ASCII File - can read UTF formats (truncated)
- Read 12d File - can read UTF formats (truncated)
You can check the file encoding format using the Conversions/ASCII File/View File Data option.
GeoSurvey detects the UTF encoding by looking for a BOM (Byte Order Mark),
which is a few specific bytes at the front of the file. If no BOM is found the file is assumed to be ASCII/ANSII.
However - some UTF-8 files are written without a BOM.
You can change the UTF encoding to include the BOM using Notepad, see below.
Changing UTF Encoding
You can use Notepad to changethe encoding method for a file.
In File Explorer, right click on the file and use Open With/Notepad to open the file.
Now do a File/Save As and set the encoding in the option near the 'Save' button.
You should convert to ANSI format for GeoSurvey to read the file.
Another option is to convert to UTF-16LE which can be detected and read by GeoSurvey