Hi everyone, my first question here at LQ was a good start, but I figured it's already time for a second one ; ) .

So here's the thing. At my work place, I'm the only Linux user (Ubuntu 9, to be specific) and everyone else uses Windows XP. We have an organization process that involves a few .txt files exchanges during the end of day.

However, I live in Brazil we use several characters like "ça, ção, vô" and the like. After some research, I found out I needed to use the same enconding for all my files, so I've set our Windows text editor to save everything in UTF-8, which is the enconding Gedit uses. But for some reason, that brings two problems:

1- Whenever I change between the two Operating Systems, the text enconding gets messed up, reading something like "cao^, c(4 small squares pictures, can't replicate at home :P)" etc. Both the original file and the copy reads as UTF-8, and this happens if I move the file from Windows to Linux and Linux to Windows;

2- Whenever I copy a file from Windows to Linux, each time I try to open it it will warn me that it is an executable program (which is not) and if should I display or run it. To avoid this, I have to manually go on properties and deselect the option "allow this to run as an executable" (or something similar).

Any suggestions on how to solve these two problems? Is it something I can do on the Windows or the Linux box? Any help would be appreciated and save me a few white hairs!

In 2 - all files in windows are executable in the unix sense. Windows does not store permissions. You'll have to retroactively set the permissions when you load the files, or set the properties to just open them without asking.

From a nautilus window, select edit > preferences > behaviour - look down to "executable text files" and check "view when open".

1. try both ways with a utf8 text editor ...

note - there are different conventions used by linux and windows for handling text anyway.

It sounds lime you have two seperate issues. The executable issue can be fixed by modifying your samba config and using the force_mode option to ensure files do not get exec permissions.

Second, file encoding is different from the line ending issue. I think your line ending issue is related to dos mode files where gedit is wanting unix type files. You should be able to change this or run dos2unix to convert the text files. There is also unix2dos or tofrodos to help convert back and forth.