Cannot open PDFs containing Polish diacritics in the file name

patrickwielo
Hi,

There seems to be a problem when trying to open a PDF that is saved in Zotero when the file name contains at least some Polish diacritics such as ą or ż. The letter ł does not seem to cause the problem. When I double-click the Zotero entry in question, Acrobat Reader is opened, but not the file.

I use Zotero 6.0.26 on macOS Ventura 13.3.1.

Report ID: 1496085326
  • dstillman
    This seems to be some sort of issue in the latest version of macOS. I was just able to reproduce this just by doing right-click → Show File and trying to open the file from Finder — a file with "ą" in the filename would open Preview but not open the file. After a few tries from Finder, it finally opened, and now it opens from either Finder or Zotero. Renaming the file and renaming it back also fixes it.
  • xwang-rs
    edited May 13, 2023
    [Merged into this thread — D.S.]

    At some point, I can not open PDF attachments of certain names using preview or PDF expert. The renaming does not work for those attachments.
    Some experts could have a try by importing this file:

    doi:10.1007/JHEP04(2023)117.
  • dstillman
    @xwang-rs: Same answer. This is a bug in the latest version of macOS.
  • xwang-rs
    @dstillman Thank you for your answer.

    Do you know what of kind of a bug in the latest version of macOS? I downloaded a PDF file and rename it with special characters as Zotero did and Preview can open it without any problem.

    Previously, I tried to rename files systematically with the plugin Zotfile, but it did not work. At the moment, I solve the issue by rename them by hand as what was suggested by you.
  • tim820
    edited May 14, 2023
    Zotfile has a special setting for diacritics - Tools\Zotfile Preferences\Advanced Settings - Remove Special Characters (diacritics) From Filename. Is that what you tried ?

    I have that setting set to ON and diacritic removal works for me (some character sets used for example with batch files have trouble with diacritics, so it's often easier just not to have to deal with diacritics in PDF filenames). But that's in Windows 10.
  • xwang-rs
    @tim820, thank you very much for your answer. I tried in your way, but it did not rename the files. I have no idea why it did not work.

    For example, I tried to import doi:10.1007/JHEP04(2023)117, and the PDF file will be downloaded automatically. I followed exactly what you mentioned "Tools\Zotfile Preferences\Advanced Settings - Remove Special Characters (diacritics) From Filename". However, the downloaded file still names with "Pögel". (I am using macOS btw, maybe it is really the problem of the OS).
  • dstillman
    edited May 14, 2023
    Do you know what of kind of a bug in the latest version of macOS?
    It's what I say above — I can reproduce this just trying to open a file from the Finder after Show File, so by definition it's a macOS bug and not a bug in Zotero itself.

    We can look into figuring out exactly what's causing this technically and report that to Apple, but with any luck they've already fixed this for the next version of Ventura. I'm not positive this is new, but I don't think we've ever seen it before, so it seems very likely that it's a regression in the latest version that will be fixed quickly.

    (It's clearly not as simple as opening any file with diacritics — Apple would've caught that. But it's likely something to do with specific Unicode normalizations and/or file-quarantine settings or things like that.)
  • dstillman
    This appears to have been fixed in macOS Ventura 13.4. It was a bug with macOS's handling of some Unicode normalizations in filenames.
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