Why accented characters sometimes turn into question marks
A text file contains characters but no note about which table those characters should be read with. Programs therefore have to guess. Files saved by older Windows editors usually use Windows-1252, modern systems use UTF-8. If a program reads a Windows file as UTF-8, accented characters become unreadable. We first check whether the content is valid UTF-8 and fall back to Windows-1252 otherwise. The detected encoding is shown above the preview and you can switch at any time.
Fixed width for source code and logs
In source code, configuration files and server logs, indentation and columns carry meaning. In a proportional font they drift apart, because an i is narrower than an m. A fixed width font gives every character the same space, so tables and indentation stay aligned. For running text such as notes or letters, the sans serif font reads more comfortably.
Long lines and wrapping
Text files know nothing about page width. A log line can run to several hundred characters. During conversion it is therefore wrapped so that nothing gets cut off. On request a small mark at the end of the line shows that there was no real line break here and the line simply continues. If you have many long lines, choose landscape orientation and a narrow margin as well.
Which characters can be shown
The standard fonts built into PDF cover the Western European character set, including all accented letters and the euro sign. Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Asian scripts are not part of it and appear as placeholders. That is a limitation of those fonts, not of this tool. If your file contains such characters, the tool for creating a PDF from typed text is the better route.
Where this helps in everyday work
Printing log files cleanly for a support ticket, archiving notes from a plain editor, attaching source code to an exam or documentation, passing on data extracts as an unchangeable document. In all these cases something formless should become something that opens, prints and archives reliably. That is exactly what PDF was made for.
Privacy: the file stays with you
The text file is read through the browser file interface and converted into a PDF right there. No upload takes place, the content is never transferred to a server or stored. That matters especially for log files, which can contain addresses, names or credentials. Once the page has loaded, the tool even works without an internet connection.
