How keep the encoding of an .rtf

Question

I'm Brazilian and this is my first time working with text in R.

I need to convert .rtf to .txt files.

Since I'm Brazilian, I speak portuguese and I need these characters: ã, õ, í, ç, ô, and others.

example

text <- "o de garantias adequadas e suficientes do cooperado ou de seus garantidores e a observância das demais normas regulamentares oficiais e internas do Sistema, e com respeito aos princípios da boa gestão, da seletividade, da diversificação"

My original code:

files <- list.files("estatutos/rtf/", pattern = "\\.rtf$")

for (file in 1:length(files)) {
  x <- files[file]
  
  # read RTF into R
  y <- striprtf::read_rtf(paste("estatutos/rtf/", x, "", sep = "")) 
  
  # strip RTF encoding
  z <- striprtf::strip_rtf(y) |>
    iconv(from = "UTF-8", to = "latin1")
  
  # Write each to a TXT file by its original name
  write(z, paste("estatutos/txt/", x, ".txt", sep = ""))
  
  # Tell about progress
  cat("Processing file", x, " - ", file, "of", length(files), "\n")
}
rm(files, x, y, z, file, i)

My problem:

When I read the .rtf I had a list like this

 [523] "o de garantias adequadas e suficientes do cooperado ou de seus garantidores e a observ"                                                                                                  
 [524] "â"                                                                                                                                                                                       
 [525] "ncia das demais normas regulamentares oficiais e internas do Sistema, e com respeito aos princ"                                                                                          
 [526] "í"                                                                                                                                                                                       
 [527] "pios da boa gest"                                                                                                                                                                        
 [528] "ã"                                                                                                                                                                                       
 [529] "o, da seletividade, da diversifica"                                                                                                                                                      
 [530] ""                                                                                                                                                                                       
 [531] "o de riscos e da seguran"                                                                                                                                                                
 [532] "ç"                                                                                                                                                                                       
 [533] "a operacional."                            

How can I put this in one text?

I tried to use striprtf::strip_rtf(), and I had the full text, but also:

[1] o de garantias adequadas e suficientes do cooperado ou de seus garantidores e a observ?ncia das demais normas regulamentares oficiais e internas do Sistema, e com respeito aos princ?pios da boa gest?o, da seletividade, da diversificao                                

"?" should be 'â', 'í', 'ã' and "çã".

ps: I also tried to put a list as string with paste(y, collapse=''), but the '?' still appearing,

Answer 1

striprtf::read_rtf is using readLines() to read the actual file.

readLines() has an encoding argument.

Most likely something like striprtf::read_rtf(..., encoding = "latin1") would work for you, as "latin1" work for most western european languages, such as portuguese.