vim converting between MS Unicode UCS-2LE and UTF-8

Many times at work I need to convert between 2 different encodings from Unicode:
1. MS Unicode -> generated e.g. by Excel when Saving data as Unicode text
2. UTF8 encoding (standard)

Requirement VIM is compiled with multi_byte support.
check if in VIM normal mode

:echo has('multi_byte')

returns 1

In VIM normal mode to open a file with certain encoding:

:e ++enc=<encoding> <filename>

To save in different encoding:

:w ++enc=<encoding> <filename>

e.g.
open in ucs-2le -> save in utf-8

:e ++enc=ucs-2le /tmp/file_ucs2le.csv
:w ++enc=utf-8 /tmp/file_utf8.csv

It works even if your fileencoding in your .vimrc (_vimrc on Windows) is different and VIM normally would recognize as different encoding from the one you want.

++enc sets fileencoding and not encoding (filencoding is needed when opening or saving the file)

More on Unicode in VIM under
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Working_with_Unicode

compiling VIM 7.2 with GTK2 under debian etch

To install GTK2 is not an issue since we can use the apt-get install libgtk2.0 libgtk2.0-dev to install gtk2 with dev libraries.

The issue I encountered was when I tried to compile VIm 7.2 with GTK2, which could not be found:

checking for GTK - version >= 2.2.0... no
checking for GTK - version >= 1.1.16... yes; found version 1.2.10

Then I decided to compile GTK2 on my own.

I failed when trying to install GTK2.14 with GLIB2.18.4 because some function definitions changed.

Finally the versions I successfully installed were:

- gtk2.8.20
- glib2.9.6
- pangoo1.11
- atk1.25.2
- cairo1.8.6
- pixman0.13.2

then to compile VIM i used (/opt/gtk2 is the prefix where I installed just compiled gtk2):

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/gtk2/lib/pkgconfig"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/gtk2/lib
export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/gtk2/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/gtk2/lib"
 ./configure --prefix=/opt/vim/ --enable-perlinterp --enable-rubyinterp --enable-multibyte --enable-gui --with-features=big

Finally GTK2 found:

checking for GTK - version >= 2.2.0... yes; found version 2.8.20

happy VImming :)