String resource file is not UTF-8 StringsFileEncoding

[Former user]

Got this error: Git prefers UTF-8 encoding, and doesn't handle some other encodings (e.g. UTF-16) very well. It thinks UTF-16 -encoded files are binary, and will thus not display line diffs for them.

But strings files basically have to be UTF-16 unfortunately.

[Ali Rantakari]

This concern is indeed relevant because Apple's documentation does still recommend using UTF-16 for string resource files. However, this advice seems deprecated, and Apple probably just hasn't gotten around to updating it.

String resource files created via the default template in Xcode 5.1 are configured with the UTF-8 encoding. There is also the “Strings file Output Encoding” Xcode build setting that can be used to perform an automatic encoding conversion during the build. For new projects, it seems to be set to “binary” (that is, the old-style plist -format string resource files are converted to binary plists by the build system.)