Re: dnd of filenames with locale specific characters

I did some tests with my app, see comments below. I will probably file a bug report myself one of these days...

On Jul 11, 2006, at 12:15 AM, Greg Guerin wrote:

Some Latin-alphabet characters with accents, such as o-acute, have TWO
possible encodings in UTF-16 (or in UTF-8, for that matter). One is the
"composed accent" form. For o-acute, that's code position U+00F3. The
second form is "decomposed accent" form, which is the unadorned letter code
(U+006F) followed by the combining acute accent (U+0301). All
combining-accent forms apply to the prior character, and they "stack", so
you can have multiple ones applied to a single base character.

Now, if you use Finder to drop files or folders on a Java app, the
handleOpenFile() method receives an ApplicationEvent with a filename.

Dnd INTO java works without a hitch, and it is indeed decomposed accent form that's used.

Please note that I'm dropping files into an open java application, so it's handled by

drop(DropTargetDropEvent dtde)

If you have evidence of decomposed accents not working in filenames, please
post the exact versions of Java and Mac OS X the problem appears in.

My application first creates a temporary file, then creates a Transferable:

files.add(tempFile);

Transferable t = new FileTransfer(files, photoId);

The temporary file does get created, I can see it and open it in Finder. So decomposed accents work when using files.

When dropped in Finder, however, an error results on the console:

java[1850] Couldn't convert path "/Users/sandboge/Pictures/pm/temp/a?a?o?.jpg" to an FSRef to put on the pasteboard.

That's it. No stacktrace, no exception.

I have no idea if there is an acceptable workaround. FSRef sounds like Cocoa, or at least not Java.

Maybe the path is converted to MacRoman at some stage, if so I don't see how to get around the problem.

If only dnd to the finder needs to be supported it might be possible to use ascii-filenames and set upp a

folder action to correct the filenames as files are dropped. But I wouldn't spend much time trying that, I

have a feeling that a lot of hardship lurks on that path.

/Pierre Sandboge

References:
	>Re: dnd of filenames with locale specific characters (From: Greg Guerin <email@hidden>)