Problem downloading files with japanese names

Question

I'm having trouble with Safari and a group-ware used in our company.
The group-ware is Cybozu, made in Japan, and now it is in version 6.
Officially, the only supported browser is MS Internet Explorer versions
5 and above (should be there something like that? I though it was
supposed to support ANY browser since that's the MAJOR selling point
for browser-based group-ware solutions...). And more: it seems that
support for Macintosh is non-existent.
Since the Panther upgrade, me and my colleagues can't download files
whose names are in japanese and that are stored in or sent to us by the
group-ware . We are working in a telecommunications company (here in
Japan), but our team focuses on media and advertising, and so are the
only ones having Macs (in an almost exclusively Windows environment).
To add to the complexity, our target market is brazilians who live in Japan
(trust me, there's a lot of them!). So our Macs have to deal also with
the accentuated characters of the Brazilian Portuguese language, english
AND japanese.
In a way, the Mac is the ONLY successful solution to such an environment.
Since administrative and other mundane tasks don't require dealing with
multilingual files, the vast majority of the employees use Windows (nothing
new there, eh?). The problem only starts to affect us when we request help
to the System Administrators. I called on them about this problem but it
seems that we are deep under in the priorities list.
So I present the problem here:
-When clicking in the link:
•With Firefox, Netscape and Explorer, there is no problem.
•With Safari, I am sent to the login window of the group-ware.
-I figured out that the problem is with the way the URLs are presented.
Let's say that the file I want to download is <a href="http://www.geocities.jp/claytonshima/Imagem1.gif>this</a>.
• <a href="http://www.geocities.jp/claytonshima/Imagem2.gif>Here's a sample of a good URL (in Firefox, Netscape and Explorer).
• http://www.geocities.jp/claytonshima/Imagem3.gif>And this is the URL in Safari.
So it seems that the problem is the way that Safari handles the japanese
characters in the URL.
Any insights on this?
Thanks in advance!
Clayton Shima
PS: Edited and included the link to the images because I couldn't figure out how to write in japanese here in these discussion boards.....

Answer 1

Hi, thanks for the reply.
The problems occurs when I click on the link AND when I copy/paste the URL.
In fact, I realized that something wrong was happening to the way Safari
handles the urls after I copied and pasted.
We are using Tiger, but the problem started to appear when we upgraded to
Panther. In Jaguar there were no problems - or is it the other way around?
I can't remember, but put the older in this place and I guess you can figure it
out, sorry!
Doing what you suggested (turning text encoding to UTF-8) solves the
problem of downloading, but when turning the encoding, all the text in the
page gets weird and unreadable. Even so, clicking in the link downloads the
file, but the file gets saved with its name all messed (the file name extension
are OK though, the same as files which file names include roman alphabet
letters preserve the integrity of such letters). This can be a temporary
workaround, but to rename each downloaded file can get quite painful if
downloading lots of files!
I have already tried changing the system language between the three ones
we most use (english, japanese and brazilian portuguese), with and without
system restart, in all the possible text encoding combinations, with no avail.
Is there the possibility that this is a Safri bug? Since the links to the files are
generated by the server running the groupware, is it possible that the
group-ware is the culprit? One could think that URL formatting is a pretty
standard thing....
ありがとうございます！　<- japanese test in UTF-8