We're in the process of standardizing on UTF-8 encoding for all source files, to make it easier for developers using a plethora of tools (notably including IntelliJ IDEA on Windows, Mac and Linux) to handle Git merge conflicts without introducing unwanted encoding changes.

While Delphi 11 seems able to handle both UTF-8 and ANSI encoded PAS and DFM files well, and has a configuration setting (under Tools > Options > Editor) called "Default file encoding", which can be changed from its default setting of ANSI to UTF8, making all newly created PAS files be saved with UTF-8 encoding, this does not seem to affect DFM files.

DFM files seem to always get saved as ANSI. This seems to apply also to DFM files that originally were in UTF-8 encoding: when I edit them in Delphi and re-save, they get changed to ANSI.

Is this a feature or a bug? If it is a feature, could you point to some authoritative documentation stating that.

CodePudding user response：

DFM files use their own proprietary encoding (# followed by number of Unicode code point) to store non-ASCII characters in string values.

However, in newer versions of Delphi, DFM files in text form may be automatically stored using UTF-8 if identifiers (class, property or component names) contain non-ASCII characters.

From the documentation for Delphi 11 Alexandria:

Component streaming (Text DFM files):

• Are fully backward-compatible.
• Stream as UTF-8 only if component type, property, or name contains non-ASCII-7 characters.
• String property values are still streamed in “#” escaped format.
• May allow values as UTF-8 as well (open issue).
• Only change in binary format is potential for UTF-8 data for component name, properties, and type name.