I had a file I was working on today, plain text and when I attempted to open it again I returned to this
The only thing I that I did differently is uninstalled and reinstalled atril document reader, did I corrupt my document in this matter?
The only thing I that I did differently is uninstalled and reinstalled atril document reader, did I corrupt my document in this matter?
Hello @Katherine_Winters
What looks like Chinese is a corrupted or changed system setting in relation to the font.
It's not a problem with Atril, but the way how that program that you used deals with the font and it's "language" (Unicode ...)
What program did you use to create what type of file and what font, and did you save it as PDF in that program?
I do not speak Chinese and the document was fiction, written in in English created in Pluma. I changed the font a few times hoping that it would change it back to no result. I checked my other text files but no others had been corrupted. I do not know if it corrupted whilst saving but I salvaged the file by going to an encoder-explorer website and copying the link into firefox. It returned to English but when I copied and placed into a libreoffice doc. The file was bloody huge, 91 pages, I was pretty startled considering that was my junk-idea file and I didn't think there was that much in there...could the size have been the problem? 
@Katherine_Winters
What I tried to say was that the program (Pluma) used a different code or you didn’t give it a file extension. It’s not really Chinese, what you see in Pluma. It’s a kind of violation that forces Pluma to interpret the text. I get sometimes files in such “Chinese” from customers. Those files are similar to dump files read in a program that can’t read crash reports.
I rarely use Pluma, but Atril is a PDF reader and shouldn’t have anything to do with this problem. What file extension did you give that file in Pluma?
I would assume that either the became corrupt in Pluma or you need a program that understands the same language and can read the header of the file. Each file has got a hidden header that tells the file format and program that was used to create that file. A file has also a hidden footer to finish the code.
I was literally doing five things at once, I don't have an inkling of what I did but I'm glad that I restored it.
Than it’s all good now.
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