Accents in the Finder
Posted November 12th, 2003 @ 12:43pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I'm hoping that someone can explain this to me: why can't the Finder handle accents properly? It can - as you can see when I'm renaming the file - but not persistently. Heck, the Terminal shows the "é" properly in "Exposé" - why can't the Finder?
Hrmph.
On an unrelated note, I very much like the new Finder. The open/save dialogs are nice, too, though I wish they'd remember that I only want to see the icons in the sidebar, not the full name. I like to use column view (in both the Finder and dialogs), and I've been able to shrink my windows by placing commonly used folders in the sidebar.
Donate Life
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 1:54pm #
Hmm. Are you using a funny script? This works for me everywhere, including in Column, List, and Icon view in a Finder browser, and on the desktop.
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 1:57pm #
Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. It's on my desktop. It also appears this way in column view, etc. Option-e e to generate the é.
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 2:35pm #
I've used literally thousands of accents and umlauts for filenames (in Portuguese and German) in the Finder without any problem since 10.0. If it were a keyboard/input method problem, your wrong icon would show as "Expos´e" not "Expose´", since you're typing the accent first.
However, a conjecture is that for some reason your filename is being converted into the "canonical decomposed unicode" format, which would look like your example. It might be informative to copy&paste that filename into some place where you can look at it both as text and hexadecimal (like Resorcerer or a hex editor), to see whether the unicode sequences got corrupted.
Something like this happened in Xcode 1.0 - it was inserting spurious NULs into Unicode text files.
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 2:54pm #
Works for me. Has anyone noticed that 10.3.1 changed the file name drop shadow on the desktop, or is this just me? It disconcerted me for a couple hours until I realized the shadow looked different.
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 2:56pm #
I use TypeIt4Me, but even with that turned off, it fails to work properly. In Font Book I've disabled Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fonts. The Terminal (ls command) displays the file name properly ("Exposé") and when I press the backspace key, both the e and the accent are deleted as one character. Copying and pasting results in the properly formed "Exposé" and even dropping it into Entourage as an attachment gives (displays) the proper name.
It's a head-scratcher. I've got no hacks installed (I used TinkerTool to change my arrows to both on both ends only) and I use the aforementioned TypeIt4Me.
Posted 12 Nov 2003 at 6:06pm #
Accented characters are very common in French and I've never seen this kind of problem since 10.0.0.
Posted 13 Nov 2003 at 12:13pm #
I don't have this problem on my 12" PowerBook nor do I have it with another user on this same computer. The only startup items I've got are the MS database daemon, LaunchBar, Synergy, and USB Overdrive. Trashing all of my preferences (well, moving them) didn't solve the problem. I re-enabled the fonts and removed TypeIt4Me - the problem still exists.
Posted 13 Nov 2003 at 12:20pm #
And now, having done all of that, the Terminal is goofed up. I can no longer enter "option-e e" and get a letter. It beeps at me.
When I let the Terminal auto-complete the file name I see this:
cp Expose\314\201\ Script
When I do a list command I see this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 iacas iacas 10072 12 Nov 12:50 Expose?? Script
These two things in particular worked yesterday. Before I began mucking around with it in an attempt to "fix" it.
Posted 13 Nov 2003 at 12:50pm #
Turns out it was a font problem. Surprisingly (sarcasm, folks), one of the following:
Lucida Blackletter
Lucida Bright
Lucida
Lucida Sans
Lucida Sans Typewriter
Lucida Handwriting
Lucida Fax
Lucida Calligraphy
Eric Albert helped me figure this one out. Why these other Lucidas (not Apple's) interfere is beyond me. Another head-scratcher:
[12:48pm iacas] % lis
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 iacas iacas 102 13 Nov 12:48 ./
drwx- 31 iacas iacas 1054 13 Nov 12:47 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 iacas iacas 0 13 Nov 12:48 expose??
[12:48pm iacas] % lsf expo
-rw-r--r-- 1 iacas iacas 0 13 Nov 12:48 exposé
lis is aliased to "ls -laF" and lsf is aliased to "ls -laF | grep "!:1" Why one shows the stuff fine is beyond me. Also, I simply get a beep when I try to type "option-e e" in the Terminal now (Monaco 9). Others get escape codes. Who knows???
This issue is now "solved"… kinda.
Posted 13 Nov 2003 at 2:31pm #
man ls says:
-N, --literal
print raw entry names (don't treat e.g. control characters spe-
cially)