Controlling Winmerge character encoding

[takuma-sasaki12]

I'm using the free version of Winmerge.

The problem is that when I load a Word file (.docx) that I used on Windows 10 with Winmerge on Windows 11, the characters become garbled.

The problematic file was loaded normally without any garbled characters on Windows 10.

The character code of the target file is "JIS". This problem can be solved by encoding the character code of the target file to "UTF-8" in Windows 11, or by changing the character code of the file loaded with Winmerge to "JIS".

However, it's a hassle to go through the above steps every time. I am considering whether there is some way to automatically detect the character code of the file in Winmerge and load it. Please let me know if there is a way to solve these problems.

[sdottaka]

Since .docx files are not plain text files but binary files created by compressing XML files, they do not have a specific character encoding. (The XML files themselves are encoded in UTF-8.)
Because of this, I found this issue quite unusual.

I suspect that the Unpacker plugin for .docx might not be applied correctly in WinMerge on Windows 11, or that a different plugin is being used and outputs text in a different encoding than on Windows 10.

Could you let me know which plugin you’re using?

Also, could you check whether the menu item Plugins → Automatic Unpacking is enabled?
If this option is not checked, the plugin will not be applied automatically and you’ll need to apply it manually.

[takuma-sasaki12]

The plugin was set to "Manual Unpacking."

However, even when I changed it to "Automatic Unpacking" the issue did not improve.

Is it possible that the problem is with Windows 11 and not with WinMerge?

[sdottaka]

Could you please attach a file that reproduces the issue?