I moved all my files to an external hard drive, then updated my Mac OS to Big Sur (that went awry so I had to erase the hard drive and set it up from scratch). Now I moved all files back to the Mac and tried to open the .tex files using TeXShop. All the umlauts are garbled or have disappeared.
Here is what I tried:
- I installed XCode and Macports. Nothing changed.
- I downloaded Aquamacs; here all files look normal and compile without an error.
- I briefly thought about finding and replacing all the umlauts but realised this is not viable; it would require me to manually fix all my files from the last fifteen years or so (nightmare).
- I moved some files to a Windows laptop and back to the Mac. No success.
- I played with the preferences in TeXShop (e.g., selecting and removing "Automatic UTF-8-Mac to UTF-8 conversion" in "Misc"). No success.
The files are all encoded \usepackage[applemac]{inputenc}
. I realised going forward I should add % !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
to them but this won't fix the current problem. I have been using this encoding with TeXShop before the update for years before the update to Big Sur (even moving tex files to the very same hard drive and back). So far there has never been a problem.
I looked at TeXShop doesn't remember file encoding and Converting .tex file written in TeXShop (on a Mac) to .tex file which compiles correctly in TeXworks and https://www.macuser.de/threads/vorhandene-dateien-nicht-ueber-osx-auffindbar-fehlerhafte-kodierung-von-dateinamen.707726/ and Umlaut not correctly displayed after Dropbox synchronisation and TeXShop doesn't remember file encoding
Hope I haven't overlooked the solution anywhere.