Character Encoding

The character encoding of a layer determines how text appears in its column data, particularly characters from many Asian languages or certain European languages. Some data files do not contain any identifying information about the character encoding they use, which can result in garbled text being visible in the GIS Editor's View Data and Edit Data windows, in labels drawn on the map, and in other places. If you find numerous characters missing or replaced by nonsensical characters in your data, you can try changing the layer's encoding to see if that corrects the problem.

To change the encoding, first close the View Data window, then right-click the layer in the Layer List. When the context menu appears, choose “Properties”. The layer's encoding is selectable via a dropdown list near the bottom of the properties window.

If you aren't sure which encoding to choose, here are some suggestions:

• Unicode (UTF-8) is a common encoding that is in wide use today. OpenStreetMap data, for example, is stored with UTF-8 encoding.
• Western European (Windows) is commonly used to encode primarily English-language layers.
• Japanese (Shift-JIS) may be used to encode Japanese-language layers.

Below is an example of how characters might look in the GIS Editor with both an incorrect (left) and the correct encoding (right):