Re: AW: filenames on MS Windows

[Allin C. <cot...@wf...>]

On Mon, 2 Nov 2020, Allin Cottrell wrote:

> On Mon, 2 Nov 2020, Bastian Märkisch wrote:
[...]
>
>> That really poses the question if we should change the default 
>> internal encoding from "ANSI" (whatever that may be depends on 
>> the Windows locale) to UTF-8.  I agree with that (and in fact my 
>> personal gnuplot.ini includes "set encoding utf8" since a long 
>> time).
>> 
>> But how do we make this backward compatible since that will 
>> inevitably break load commands in old "ANSI" encoded user 
>> scripts? (as does your current patch btw)
>
> Are you sure about that breakage, Bastian? [...]

I'm not sure I've understood the circumstances under which you 
reckon my patch would break load commands, but I just tried an 
experiment which I think is relevant. This is on Windows 10 with 
system codepage 1252, using my patched wgnuplot.exe.

I placed a gnuplot script in a directory named with Cyrillic 
characters (so not representable in CP1252), reading as follows:

# loader script
set encoding cp1252
load '<CP1252 filename>'

where <CP1252 filename> is the full path to a second script, in
a directory with a non-ASCII name representable in CP1252. (It 
contains an o-circumflex.) The second script reads thus:

# plot script
set term pngcairo
set output '<CP1252 output>'
plot sin(x)

where <CP1252 output> is again a full path including the 
non-ASCII but CP-friendly directory name.

I then called wgnuplot.exe on the "loader" script, passing its 
filename as UTF-16, and it all went fine: the loader was read OK, 
from its Cyrillic location; the load command worked; and the PNG was 
written successfully.

--
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University