# Soft wrap, huge files and text encodings in Skink

> Wrap long lines in Skink (:wrap, softwrap and wordwrap settings), open multi-gigabyte logs in the large-file view, and work with legacy encodings like windows-1252 or Shift_JIS.

Source: https://skink.cc/editing/long-lines-and-big-files/

## Soft wrap

Run `:wrap`, or pick **View → Soft wrap** in the menu bar (F10). Long lines wrap at the window edge in this tab, and continued rows show `↪` instead of a line number. ↑, ↓, Home, End and the wheel move by screen row.

To wrap every file, or one language:

```json
{
  "softwrap": true,
  "[markdown]": { "softwrap": true }
}
```

Lines break at spaces. `"wordwrap": false` breaks anywhere, which suits minified code.

## Big files

| File size | What you get |
|---|---|
| Under 8 MB | Everything: colours, language server, editing |
| 8 MB and up | Editable, but no syntax colours and no language server (marked LARGE) |
| 16 MB and up | Loads in the background; keep working in other tabs meanwhile |
| 256 MB and up | The large-file view |

The **large-file view** is read-only and reads straight from disk, so a 2 GB log takes a few MB of memory. Lines show while the file is indexed, and a log that grows is indexed again. Scrolling, Go to line, Find and copying (up to 64 MB) work. Find looks at one line at a time and pauses on a long search: search again to go on.

`SKINK_BG_LOAD_BYTES` and `SKINK_HUGE_BYTES` change the 16 MB and 256 MB limits.

## Text encodings

Skink keeps a file's encoding: UTF-8 (with or without BOM), UTF-16 and legacy ones like windows-1252, Shift_JIS, EUC-JP, GBK, Big5, EUC-KR and KOI8-R. Those open editable and save back in the same encoding. The status line names any encoding that isn't plain UTF-8.

| Command | Does |
|---|---|
| `:encoding` | Show the file's encoding |
| `:encoding utf-8` | Save in that encoding from now on (`latin1`, `sjis`, `gbk`, …) |
| `:reopen NAME` | Read the file again as NAME, when Skink guessed wrong |

A save refuses characters the encoding can't hold and names the first one. Binary files open read-only, so a save can't damage them.