Question

I have made an app where I read words from an rtf file

File is loaded through this code

self.germanpath = [[NSBundle mainBundle]pathForResource:@"german" ofType:@"rtf"];
germanfile = [[NSString alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:germanpath encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error];

The files contents are

schockierend knusprig das Schachmatt der Schriftsteller getrocknete
Früchte

When I output the string the characters like ü are printing like getrocknete Fr\'fcchte. Both in app and in NSLog statements it is coming as \'.

Edit

I just tried outputting simply

NSLog(@"schockierend knusprig das Schachmatt der Schriftsteller getrocknete Früchte");

and it worked. So I am stating the method I used to output it; I am outputting word by word

NSString *startfrom = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"german%i",i];
NSString *word = nil;
NSScanner *scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:germanfile];
[scanner scanUpToString:startfrom intoString:nil];
[scanner scanUpToString:@" end" intoString:&word];
NSString *finalword = [word substringFromIndex:[startfrom length]];
Word.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"DK Crayon Crumble" size:25.0];
Word.text = finalword;
NSLog(@"%@",finalword);
[startfrom release]; 

Answer 1

It’s an RTF file, not a plain text file. Its contents are encoded according to how RTF files are encoded, which involves escaping non-ASCII characters.

Because there’s no native RTF support on iOS (there is on Mac OS X with NSAttributedString), you would have to roll your own RTF parser in order to read this file. I wouldn’t recommend it. If the RTF file is actually being used to store attributes (such as italic or bold text), you’ll have to go the parser route to convert it to an NSAttributedString or some other format.

If it’s just plain text (and can therefore be fully represented by a Unicode string) then you should recreate the file as a TXT file using a known encoding (such as UTF-8) and then use -[NSString initWithContentsOfFile:encoding:] to read it.