Diacritical characters get 'translated'

[Dyslexia]

Hi,

New to this forum.
I'm just a simple point-and-click type user and using Calibre is great to keep my collection organised.
However, there is one thing that annoys me greatly.
Whenever I have a diacritical character in an author name or a book title, calibre 'translates' this into the normal character form on disk in the folder name created for the author, as well as in the file-name created for the epub file. eg. ö becomes plain o; é becomes e; etc.
Funny thing is, in the library calibre accepts and maintains those , but once out on disk the 'translation' has taken place.

Have I got something configured incorrectly?, although I can't imagine what, since I'm basically using a next-next-finish type installation (can you tell I'm using a Windows box?), i.e. apart from choosing my language and reader I haven't made any configuration changes.

Or, is it not possible at all to have calibre maintain these characters?

Appreciate your insight(s) here.

[Dyslexia]

Forgot to mention, also when eg. the author name is something like Persson, Leif G.W. (ie. ends in initials followed by a period, calibre turns this into Persson, Leif G.W_ - <booktitle>.epub, ie. changes the final period into an underscore.
Why? Windows handles this perfectly well, as I'm sure other OS's do too, so why?

(Sorry for tagging this onto my own thread)

[eschwartz]

See Preferences ==> Saving books to disk

Uncheck the option "Convert non-English characters to English equivalents".


As for the underscores, calibre will always replace filepath-unsafe characters with an underscore. One of those unsafe characters is "period at the end of a pathname component".


The OS/filesystem may allow a pathname component ending with a period to be created, but Windows can and will do some seriously funky things when you do. (The Win32 API has Issues with a capital I. Officially, you Cannot create filepaths ending in a period, and if you try Windows will simply create it without the period. But there are hacks to circumvent that -- Cygwin is one -- and then your troubles start, because all the usual ways of dealing with those filepaths will choke hard on it.)
calibre does what it does for good reasons. And there certainly aren't any bad side effects when replacing that period with an underscore (even on linux and OSX).


EDIT: Here's your proof. MSDN has this to say about Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces

• Do not end a file or directory name with a space or a period. Although the underlying file system may support such names, the Windows shell and user interface does not. However, it is acceptable to specify a period as the first character of a name. For example, ".temp".

[Dyslexia]

Hello eschwartz,

Thank you for taking the time to 'set me straight'.
I will look into the settings you suggested.

However your following statement peaked my interest:
"The OS/filesystem may allow a pathname component ending with a period to be created, but Windows can and will do some seriously funky things when you do."

Could I impose on you to elaborate a little more on this?
What funky things eg.?

Thanks

[eschwartz]

Well, the file or folder will exist on disk -- IF it gets created by sneaking around the Win32 API -- but most (standard) ways of interacting with it (read: anything that uses the Win32 API) won't be able to create it, open it, move it, or delete it. (I believe it may show up as a zero-byte file???)


Windows has plenty of legacy issues surrounding filenames inherited from the DOS days.


Just take a stroll down these Google Search results: folder ending in a period



Bottom line: not wise to take a dive in the uncharted waters of Windows-land.