Package: gedit
Severity: enhancement
Version: 2.2.1
Synopsis: Open files despite invalid characters
Bugzilla-Product: gedit
Bugzilla-Component: general

Description:
Description of Problem:
When opening arbitrary (binary) files with GEdit, it sometimes display
an error like "Can't open file, because it contains invalid UTF-8
characters".
(Another problem is that ordinary users don't know what UTF-8 characters
are.)

Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Start gedit
2. Open /bin/sh
3. Error dialog appears.

Actual Results:
An error dialog appears, and the file isn't opened.

Expected Results:
Instead of not opening the file, GEdit should at least present the
option to open and remove the invalid characters, or to convert them to
something else (e.g. "0xABCD" character sequences). Alternatively, GEdit
could replace the invalid characters with placeholders for displaying.
Maybe it would be useful to make the files read-only for the editor, so
the user can't save it over the original file.

Additional Information:
* For UTF-8, there are no problems "restarting" after invalid
characters, because the encoding makes sure of that (Bit 8 set/not
set).
* The feature would be generally useful for debugging, and extracting
strings from binaries in a quick way.
* Even Text files can't be opened if e.g. a text editor crashed and
wrote garbage into the file.




------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2003-08-08 07:37 -------

Reassigning to the default owner of the component, maggi@athena.polito.it.