Special characters in file name (e.g. ä, ö, ü)

[Headbucket]

Hey,
I am absolutely in love with this program! Thanks a lot. Unfortunately, there are currently problems with special characters in file names. For example the german umlauts "ä", "ö" or "ü".

If my file name contains one of these characters and I try to open the file by double-clicking the XML Tree Editor remains empty. When I try to open the file by "File" -> "Open" the file opens with the message "This is a read-only file, changes cannot be saved".

Are you still working on the program? I would be so happy if this bug could be fixed. I can also try to make changes to the git repository, if possible?

Thanks a lot!
Headbucket

[Victor]

Hi,
Sorry, I missed you post, the notification went to the junk.
I don't think umlauts should cause any problems. There is nothing specific in the program itself about characters in file names - it uses OS functions. So it should work same way as other programs work in your environment.
The issue can be if there are non-latin characters in tag names or attribute names. I guess the parser accepts only A...Z, a...z, 0...9 and "_" characters. See this extract from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_elements.asp about valid characters:

XML Naming Rules

XML elements must follow these naming rules:

Element names are case-sensitive
Element names must start with a letter or underscore
Element names cannot start with the letters xml (or XML, or Xml, etc)
Element names can contain letters, digits, hyphens, underscores, and periods
Element names cannot contain spaces

Any name can be used, no words are reserved (except xml).
Best Naming Practices

Create descriptive names, like this: <person>, <firstname>, <lastname>.

Create short and simple names, like this: <book_title> not like this: <the_title_of_the_book>.

Avoid "-". If you name something "first-name", some software may think you want to subtract "name" from "first".

Avoid ".". If you name something "first.name", some software may think that "name" is a property of the object "first".

Avoid ":". Colons are reserved for namespaces (more later).

Non-English letters like éòá are perfectly legal in XML, but watch out for problems if your software doesn't support them.

The last phrase suggests that Free Pascal parser may not suppost national characters. Just open your XML file in plain text editor and check if this is the case.

Best regards,
Victor

[Victor]

You are right, XMLTreeEditor behaves exactly as you described if the file name contains non-latin characters. The situation even worse if non-latin characters found in tag or attribute names.
Seems to be lack of proper Unicode implementation. I will try to find workarounds.

[Headbucket]

Thanks a lot for you answer.
I try to keep tag or attribute names in English - that's why I have not noticed yet. But file names could contain non-latin characters :-(.

I really hope you find a workaround with free pascal.

Thanks again.

Best regards,
Headbucket

[Victor]

Hi,
I have released a new version with support for non-Latin characters in file names. So far it is only Windows 64 bit executable, Linux version has not been tested yet. As I suspected internal DOM implementation does not seem to support non-Latin characters in Tag and Attribute names.
After Linux version is tested it will be released as well along with source codes.

Best regards,
Victor

[Headbucket]

Hey,
What a great Christmas present! :) Too bad, that DOM implementation does not support non-Latin characters. But I think that this restriction is just about bearable.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and thanks again for this great tool!

Best regards,
Headbucket