Re: AW: filenames on MS Windows

[Ethan A M. <me...@uw...>]

On Monday, 2 November 2020 01:48:42 PST Bastian Märkisch wrote:
> Right now, gnuplot is able to "load" file names with Unicode encoded names, i.e. the sequence
> 	set encoding utf8
> 	load 'абвгдежзийклмнопрстуфхцчшщъыьэюяѐёђѓєѕіїјљњћќѝўџ.plt'
> will work just fine. 

But only if the encoding is set to utf8, right?
Which is a bit counter-intuitive since on Windows the
filename is not actually utf8.

I had not realized before this that the encoding could affect
how files are opened.  The documentation under "encoding" and/or
"utf8" could be expanded.  Maybe also "set print|out|table" or
add some general statement about filenames?

	Ethan 


> Only loading via the command line does not work and that should indeed be improved. (I don't agree to use glib for that purpose - but that is easy to change).
> 
>   Bastian
> 
> > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: Allin Cottrell <cot...@wf...>
> > Gesendet: Sonntag, 1. November 2020 21:24
> > An: Ethan A Merritt <me...@uw...>
> > Cc: gnuplot-beta <gnu...@li...>
> > Betreff: Re: filenames on MS Windows
> > 
> > On Sun, 1 Nov 2020, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> > 
> > > On Saturday, 31 October 2020 17:36:03 PST Allin Cottrell wrote:
> > >> On Sun, 25 Oct 2020, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> I tried googling this but didn't find an answer -- sorry if I should
> > >>> have just tried harder! My question is: can gnuplot on Windows
> > >>> handle a unicode filename argument passed in UTF-16? As in
> > >>>
> > >>> path/to/wgnuplot.exe <UTF-16 input filename>
> > >>
> > >> OK, that question was under-researched, but now I've done my
> > >> homework. Sorry, this is a bit long but I hope I can arouse some
> > >> interest in the topic.
> > >
> > > I don't have any direct insight into this issue other than to note
> > > that the filesytem itself may be an issue.
> > 
> > In some contexts, no doubt. But if we set aside exotica such as surrogate pairs,
> > NTFS filenames are UTF-16 to a very good approximation. As such they are
> > easily converted to UTF-8 to permit handling with good old C char * APIs, and
> > easily converted back to
> > UTF-16 for _wfopen() if required.
> > 
> > > The following entry from the R developer blog is of interest
> > >
> > >
> > > https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/2020/05/02/utf-8-support-o
> > > n-windows/
> > >
> > > I gather from the discussion there that Windows-10 can be made to
> > > support UTF-8 as a native encoding, calling it "extended ASCII".
> > 
> > Interesting, yes, but at this point kinda science fiction. The practical issue at
> > present is whether gnuplot wants to support out-of-codepage UTF-16
> > filenames on the Windows command line. It's not terribly difficult, as I tried to
> > show.
> > 
> > Sorry if I'm being repetitive, but right now if a create, say, a Russian-language
> > filename on Windows and pass it as command-line argument to gnuplot,
> > gnuplot will not be able to open the file because its name cannot be
> > represented in my "system codepage". A program that reads the command line
> > as UTF-16, however, will have no problem opening the file.
> > 
> > Allin Cottrell
> 
> 


-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center,  K-428 Health Sciences Bldg
MS 357742,   University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742