Text File Handling

When OnSong imports certain files, it may need to be given a hint to the file encoding or format. Text File Handling settings help OnSong know how to handle certain files it encounters.

Fallback File Extension

OnSong uses the file extension of a file to determine its file format. This is important during the import process so that text conversion can occur to a supported internal format, or so external files like PDF can be viewed correctly.

In most cases files have a file extension. OpenSong files tend to be extension-less but are really XML-formatted files. For this reason, OnSong will automatically append a .xml file extension to files that have no extension. This identifies the file as an OpenSong file and converts it appropriately.

If you have many files that have no extension, and the type of the file is known, enter the file extension in this place.

File Encoding

Text encoding is the process of converting characters in a written language into binary values that can be stored by a computer. OnSong is designed to guess the file encoding of a file, but there are some occasions where the file encoding is not known. The default setting for this is Auto meaning the encoding is guessed. If you know the encoding of the file, select it from one of the options:

• Auto detects the encoding based on the contents of the file. Default.
• ASCII is a basic text encoding that covers most western character sets.
• UTF-8 is a superset of ASCII which contains most characters found through the world, but does not include some characters such as those found in Asian languages. OnSong uses UTF-8 internally and stores larger character sets in a way that makes them retrievable.
• UTF-16 uses 16-bit values for defining the character set allowing for 32,768 possible characters.
• UTF-32 uses 32-bit values for defining the character set allowing for 2 billion possible characters.
• ISO-Latin or better known as its codepage "iOS-8859-1". It is similar to UTF-8 and holds Latin-based characters.

Text File Conversion

When text files are imported, OnSong can automatically translate them in the OnSong file format. This places chords into square brackets automatically. Since OnSong can now automatically handle chords over lyrics in the song viewer, this is set to Text by default. You can still have OnSong convert your songs automatically by choosing OnSong instead.