I would like to know the difference between "ASCII text" and "ASCII English text".

I actually didn't even notice until an application started throwing all kinds of errors. In CentOS 5, "ASCII English text" seems to be the default, but even checking the /etc directory shows both file types.

Which is which? and how do I convert between one and the other (each way). It's not a unix2dos or dos2unix thing.

Here's an example of what I'm seeing:

The only thing I can think of is sometimes I use pico (Yes I installed the Alpine package) or nano, sometimes I use vi (on CentOS that's an executable located at /bin/vi), and I usually use vim (on CentOS that's an exectuable located at /usr/bin/vim).

I don't know why, but on most distros vi is just a symlink to vim but on all the CentOS boxes I build they're both their own executables (vim 7.0.237).

here's an update...

by default, on CentOS 5:

when you create a file with vi it is of type:

When you create a file with vim it is of type:

And I still don't understand the difference or why. Can someone shed some light on this and how to convert between one, the other, and perhaps how to make the "set:" command convert between one and the other or switch a default setting in the rc files?

Thanks, this is strange to me.

Technically ascii is only english or really a US set codes to represent a way to use a teletype.

vim further identifies it because vim could be set to some other keymap.

wiki may be best source of possible extensions.

"As computer technology spread throughout the world, different standards bodies and corporations developed many variations of ASCII to facilitate the expression of non-English languages that used Roman-based alphabets. One could class some of these variations as "ASCII extensions", although some misuse that term to represent all variants, including those that do not preserve ASCII's character-map in the 7-bit range."

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