Pilcrows ¶ and Thorns þ

The following are default delimiters used in Relativity load files:

The character used for columns is ¶ and it is ASCII 20.

The character used for quotes is þ and it is ASCII 254.

The character used for line breaks (in document text) is ® and it is ASCII 174.

The character used for multiple values is ; and it is ASCII 59.

The character used for nested values (folder levels) is \ and it is ASCII 92.

The last three characters you probably recognize - a registered sign, a semi-colon; and a backslash. The first two are more unusual. Many people call a ¶ a paragraph mark, but the correct term is a pilcrow. It's always good to use a fancy word when you can. The funny looking P character, þ , is a thorn - a letter used only Icelandic. Press ALT + 0254 on your number pad to enter it.

Using NotePad ++ to Detect Text File Encoding

You can detect the encoding a text file in NotePad ++ by looking on the bottom right, as shown in the red box in the screen grab below.

The manual for Relativity Desktop Client, the software that Relativity uses to import and export meta and documents, states that, "Relativity does not support Unicode .opt files for image imports. When you have a Unicode .opt file, you must resave this file in ANSI/Western European encoding." So ANSI , the American National Standards Institute, ASCII encoding is referred to by KCura as Western European text. If you have an image load file in UTF-8 unicode or something else you need to convert it.

Western European (Windows) and Unicode (UTF-8) File Encoding

Relativity allows admins to import load files that have either Western European (Windows) or Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. What is the difference between the two? Western European (Windows) or ANSI (Windows-1252) text is a small extension of the standard ASCII text English character set that includes characters used in other Latin alphabet European languages. This chart shows the full character set:

UTF-8, or Unicode, consists of more than 128,000 characters, accounting for Greek, Chinese, Cyrillic, Japanese and many other non-Latin alphabets. For a fuller discussion, see the Tip of the Night for November 25, 2015. In Relativity if you attempt to import Unicode text into a field that is not Unicode enabled, you'll get scrambled results. You can set a field for Unicode by going to Administration . . . Fields.

If you need to quickly determine which encoding a load file uses, download File Encoding Checker from CodePlex. See this page, https://encodingchecker.codeplex.com/ . In the file mask box, simply enter a string such as *.dat to find all of the load files. Then click 'View'. You'll get a list showing each file's encoding.