Saving Files in "Unicode" Option

This section provides a tutorial example on how to save text files with Nodepad by selecting the Unicode encoding option on the save file dialog box.

In the next test, I want to try the save function with the Unicode encoding.

1. Run Notepad and open hello.utf-8 correctly with the UTF-8 encoding option selected.

2. Click the File > "Save As" menu. The "Save As" dialog box comes up.

3. Enter notepad_utf-16le as the new file name and select "Unicode" option in the Encoding field.

Notepad Save UTF-16LE File
Notepad Save UTF-16LE File

4. Click the Save button. Notepad saves the text to a new file named as: notepad_utf-16le.txt.

5. To see how my text is saved by Notepad, I need to run my HEX dump program on notepad_utf-16le.txt:

C:\herong\uni\unicode>java HexWriter notepad_utf-16le.txt
   notepad_utf-16le.hex

Number of input bytes: 170

C:\herong\unicode>type notepad_utf-16le.hex
FFFE480065006C006C006F0020006300
6F006D00700075007400650072002100
20002D00200045006E0067006C006900
730068000D000A0035751181604F7D59
01FF20002D002000530069006D007000
6C006900660069006500640020004300
680069006E006500730065000D000A00
FB966681604F7D5957FE20002D002000
54007200610064006900740069006F00
6E0061006C0020004300680069006E00
6500730065000D000A00

Very nice. This is a perfect UTF-16 encoding file using the Little-Endian with BOM format. Those leading 2 bytes represent the BOM flag, which is not part of the text.

Conclusion - The "Unicode" encoding option of Notepad matches the "Little-Endian with BOM" format of Unicode UTF-16 encoding.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Character Sets and Encodings

 ASCII Character Set and Encoding

 GB2312 Character Set and Encoding

 GB18030 Character Set and Encoding

 JIS X0208 Character Set and Encodings

 Unicode Character Set

 UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-Bit)

 UTF-16, UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE Encodings

 UTF-32, UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE Encodings

 Python Language and Unicode Characters

 Java Language and Unicode Characters

 Character Encoding in Java

 Character Set Encoding Maps

 Encoding Conversion Programs for Encoded Text Files

Using Notepad as a Unicode Text Editor

 What Is Notepad

 Opening UTF-8 Text Files

 Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

 Opening UTF-16LE Text Files

 Saving Files in UTF-8 Option

 Byte Order Mark (BOM) - FEFF - EFBBBF

 Saving Files in "Unicode Big Endian" Option

Saving Files in "Unicode" Option

 Supported Save and Open File Formats

 Using Microsoft Word as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Excel as a Unicode Text Editor

 Unicode Fonts

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB