Regional text in patch windows

Original Patch, serial-import previews, repository unified diffs and partial staging use the legacy code page selected in Merge settings. Each read captures that choice before asynchronous work starts. Changing settings affects a new read; it does not reinterpret a loaded document or an accepted import preview. UTF-8 lines remain readable inside patches containing regional text.

The displayed text is separate from Git's byte packets. Partial Stage/Unstage, unchanged exports and the private clipboard patch format retain original bytes. The ordinary clipboard text flavor contains the decoded display text. Original Patch and serial previews remain read-only.

Editable patch documents

Open captures the legacy code page before reading the file. A BOM takes precedence. Save and Save As encode edits using the captured source codec, retaining BOM, line endings and a real leading U+FEFF text character. A saved regional document keeps its codec even if its new bytes also happen to form valid UTF-8. Copy Patch uses the same encoding rule for unsaved edits.

Changing only the Unicode spelling of text, such as composed é to e plus a combining accent, counts as an edit. Styling and replacement approval use exact text as well. The native renderer preserves a final CRLF instead of treating its LF as absent. An unrepresentable edit reports an error and leaves the file and dirty document intact. Unchanged malformed/opaque data can still be exported without decoding and re-encoding it.

TortoiseUDiff uses Scintilla's byte buffer, UTF-8 or Windows GetACP(), and writes that byte buffer on Save. The Mac uses native Unicode text controls and an explicit legacy preference in place of GetACP(). It is not yet a complete byte-editor port: byte-backed document editing now preserves untouched mixed-codec and opaque fragments through edits, Save/Save As, clipboard and Undo, including NUL. The earlier whole-document encoding rejection and dirty-NUL limitation describe the original checkpoint. Inserted text still needs to fit its affected region; there is no standalone conversion picker. See the newer checkpoint for remaining mapping and physical acceptance limits.

Validation

The dated checkpoint records focused Core and grouped native evidence, failures and limitations. It covers regional patch selection, original bytes, mixed UTF-8/legacy display, BOM edits, ambiguous regional save bytes and exact Unicode spelling changes. Native workflows exercise partial staging, Original Patch, serial preview, captured Open, Save As and both clipboard representations using system and bundled Git, followed by retained standalone-document and partial-staging workflows.

Complete visual matching, all codepage byte mappings, physical print/Finder and signed sandbox acceptance remain open. This checkpoint does not certify full TortoiseUDiff parity or a complete hosted CI pass.

Regional unified diff, light Regional unified diff, dark

Patch path identity covers the separate connected filename/rename recovery and serial-provider migration. Exact metadata does not certify simultaneous filesystem aliases.