Problem downloading files with japanese names

I'm having trouble with Safari and a group-ware used in our company.

The group-ware is Cybozu, made in Japan, and now it is in version 6.
Officially, the only supported browser is MS Internet Explorer versions
5 and above (should be there something like that? I though it was
supposed to support ANY browser since that's the MAJOR selling point
for browser-based group-ware solutions...). And more: it seems that
support for Macintosh is non-existent.

Since the Panther upgrade, me and my colleagues can't download files
whose names are in japanese and that are stored in or sent to us by the
group-ware . We are working in a telecommunications company (here in
Japan), but our team focuses on media and advertising, and so are the
only ones having Macs (in an almost exclusively Windows environment).

To add to the complexity, our target market is brazilians who live in Japan
(trust me, there's a lot of them!). So our Macs have to deal also with
the accentuated characters of the Brazilian Portuguese language, english
AND japanese.

In a way, the Mac is the ONLY successful solution to such an environment.
Since administrative and other mundane tasks don't require dealing with
multilingual files, the vast majority of the employees use Windows (nothing
new there, eh?). The problem only starts to affect us when we request help
to the System Administrators. I called on them about this problem but it
seems that we are deep under in the priorities list.

So I present the problem here:
-When clicking in the link:
•With Firefox, Netscape and Explorer, there is no problem.
•With Safari, I am sent to the login window of the group-ware.

-I figured out that the problem is with the way the URLs are presented.
Let's say that the file I want to download is <a href="http://www.geocities.jp/claytonshima/Imagem1.gif>this</a>.
• <a href="http://www.geocities.jp/claytonshima/Imagem2.gif>Here's a sample of a good URL (in Firefox, Netscape and Explorer).

• http://www.geocities.jp/claytonshima/Imagem3.gif>And this is the URL in Safari.

So it seems that the problem is the way that Safari handles the japanese
characters in the URL.

Any insights on this?
Thanks in advance!

Clayton Shima

PS: Edited and included the link to the images because I couldn't figure out how to write in japanese here in these discussion boards.....

Posted on Nov 2, 2005 2:12 AM

Reply
4 replies

Nov 2, 2005 8:23 AM in response to Clayton Shima

You can post Japanese in the forums if you set your browser to UTF-8 in View > Text Encoding.

As for the substance of your problem, Safari seems to be sending the Japanese in the url in escape codes instead of the actual text. Are you copy/pasting the url or just clicking on a link? Have you tried switching the encoding to UTF-8 in the menu mentioned above, or to another Japanese encoding? You mention Panther, but I assume you are actually talking about Tiger Safari at the moment, since that is what you are running? Have you tried temporarily switching Safari to Japanese? You could do this by moving Japanese to the top of the list in system prefs/international/languages and restarting Safari (but not logging out or restarting the OS, which will change the whole system over).

Nov 3, 2005 6:43 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi, thanks for the reply.

The problems occurs when I click on the link AND when I copy/paste the URL.
In fact, I realized that something wrong was happening to the way Safari
handles the urls after I copied and pasted.

We are using Tiger, but the problem started to appear when we upgraded to
Panther. In Jaguar there were no problems - or is it the other way around?
I can't remember, but put the older in this place and I guess you can figure it
out, sorry! 😉

Doing what you suggested (turning text encoding to UTF-8) solves the
problem of downloading, but when turning the encoding, all the text in the
page gets weird and unreadable. Even so, clicking in the link downloads the
file, but the file gets saved with its name all messed (the file name extension
are OK though, the same as files which file names include roman alphabet
letters preserve the integrity of such letters). This can be a temporary
workaround, but to rename each downloaded file can get quite painful if
downloading lots of files!

I have already tried changing the system language between the three ones
we most use (english, japanese and brazilian portuguese), with and without
system restart, in all the possible text encoding combinations, with no avail.

Is there the possibility that this is a Safri bug? Since the links to the files are
generated by the server running the groupware, is it possible that the
group-ware is the culprit? One could think that URL formatting is a pretty
standard thing....

ありがとうございます! <- japanese test in UTF-8

Nov 3, 2005 7:23 PM in response to Clayton Shima

to rename each downloaded file can get quite painful if

downloading lots of files!

You might try the utility which is designed for this problem:

http://docs.info.apple.com./article.html?artnum=86182

Disregard any error messages you get upon installation -- you will find the program in Applications/Utilities. It works by drag and drop I think.

Sorry, I don't know where the culprit might be.

Nov 4, 2005 12:22 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks for the tip on the little app.

I discovered that I could use it a lot in a daily basis. However, correcting
the files above mentioned is out of the reach for this utility (error -8783,
File could not be repaired ....Buttons: Skip all...Cancel...Skip File.....).

I guess it will take some time to figure the solution out.
Meanwhile, I guess Firefox will have to do (great browser, but I don't
like the way it handles tabbed browsing. In Safari, if you want to close
tabs successively, you just press command+w, and the tabs go closing
in the order you opened them. In Firefox, it's hard to keep track of
which one will be the next tab...)

Like Dory said: "Just keep swimming, keeeeeep swimming!"

Anyway, thanks for the response and the great Mac-advisory job!

Clayton Shima

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Problem downloading files with japanese names

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