DirectFTP UTF-8 characters - Post ID...

User 97432 Photo


Registered User
5 posts

Greetings!
I find that when attempting to download files with UTF-8 characters in the name (such as ü )

The transfer fails and I get this message:

"Connected, but could not open "mediafiles/audio/59766/". It may not exist or you don't have permission to open it with the protocol you are using."

mediafiles/audio/59766/ is the name of the source subdirectory.

The transfer works correctly using fireFTP

Is this a known problem? is there some setting I am missing? Is there a solution?

Have fun,
Paxton
User 122279 Photo


Senior Advisor
14,447 posts

It is - and always has been - recommended to use only letters from the English alphabet, and/or numbers 0-9 in file names for the web.
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 97432 Photo


Registered User
5 posts

Greetings!
Inger,
Thank you for your response.

I'd have to say, the answer should have been: " Direct FTP does not handle file names with characters beyond English a-z and numbers 0-9."

Other clients do, and as many .mp3 files reflect album/track names which include 'foreign' characters, I
will simple choose other FTP clients.


Have fun,
Paxton
User 122279 Photo


Senior Advisor
14,447 posts

That will of course be up to you. The problem is when someone visits, or want to visit, your site, if they don't have those characters on their keyboard and have to search for them in the character map. I bet they may give up before they actually have seen your site.

So it is actually not just the CC FTP client, but also the web, which have problems with file names including letters outside the English alphabet.

Just a parallel: A friend of mine had created a very nice site and complained that he didn't have any visitiors from other countries (just Norwegians and Danes). When he told me his domain name, I knew exactly why, it was www.øl.no (beer.no). The only countries with that letter are, to my knowledge, just Norway and Denmark. Well, maybe Iceland...
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 298877 Photo


Ambassador
292 posts

Hi Paxton,

The FTP client from Coffeecup is compliant, maybe others are not.

When you wish to include files which have file names by default that are not compliant, instead of choosing an ftp client which suits this error, it's better to rename these files and have a web site which is compliant and more importantly, available for proper crawling and archiving by search engines.

That's what matters and the example given by Inger should serve to drive this point home.

You want a web site that will a) be found and b) be experienced properly by all visitors

Dave :)
User 97432 Photo


Registered User
5 posts

Greetings, Dave and Inger,

I do appreciate and understand your points. And, we can agree to disagree. :-)

I feel your thinking is stuck in the past. The world has many characters, and we must find methods of dealing with them.

Also, all FTP transactions are not about transferring HTML and associated files.

My site, thedce.com is about a method for the legal protection and exchange of copyrighted materials, We deal with hundreds of thousands of song titles, and must accommodate the real names as best we can. We do everything in UTF-8 and 'jump though the hoops' where we must.

The FTP activity that uncovered the current issue was moving mp3 files from our local machine (Windows) across the internet to our media storage machine ( a linux machine). Normally this work is done by a person who prefers to use FireFTP. I was doing some similar activities to prepare a sandbox for my development work when I discovered this issue. I simply used FireFTP to accomplish my work, but thought it may be useful to inform you of the issue.

What you are calling 'complaint', I would call restrictive or limited.

Perhaps DirectFTP is useful for your other customers in helping them to avoid certain characters. If I were designing DirectFTP I would at least make that an option.

I enjoy having and sometimes using your software, so not a complaint, just an observation.

Have fun,
Paxton
User 38401 Photo


Senior Advisor
10,951 posts

I would suggest opening a support ticket and reporting this to the CoffeeCup staff rather than just here on the user to user forums. I think you're confusing those posting here with being staff of CC which we are not. In order to report something to the company, you always need to open a support ticket and discuss things directly with them.

You can open a support ticket by doing the following:

Go to the top right of the website here
Click account then Your Support Room
Start support topic and ask the same question there.

Have something to add? We’d love to hear it!
You must have an account to participate. Please Sign In Here, then join the conversation.