ok, i noticed the problem affects also italian special characters, so it was easier for me to make tests.
first let say what the browsers do when you type the filename directly in the URL. it is an interesting thing because this way the URL is easy to type and to read. this is not necessarely related to file listing, where the server can encode the URL as it prefers.
IE and Opera encode in UTF8.
Firefox encodes in ANSI.
then i decided to see what other servers do.
abyss web server: in file listing it uses ANSI and don't even encodes extended characters using %. the result is: browsers do the encoding themself, but IE and Opera uses UTF8 so if you click on the file it does NOT work, only Firefox can download it.
apache: had no luck reinstalling it, it refuses to do it. ugh
badblue PE: same story as abyss.
easy file sharing: it encodes using ANSI. this mean it will work correctly with all browsers, you can download it, yes, BUT the filename will be WRONG if you use a codepage different from the server.
the problem with HFS was that encoding in unicode, some browsers will send a request in UTF8 (IE,Opera) and others in ANSI (Firefox) and there is no way to determine how it is encoded. Client ID may be faked or missing, so can't rely on it, and the option in HFS may be changed from the moment the listing was downloaded to the time the browser clicked on the link.
in beta25 i implemented a "smart" solution. if the file is not found as ANSI, then it tries as UTF8.
i tested it with IE, Opera and Firefox, and it seems to work.
people wishing to test it may contact me privately because this is a non-public release.
If it really works 99% of times, i may think to enable unicode by default.
Let say that this does not mean HFS has full support for unicode.
indeed despite the bug reported in this thread, there is another problem that is NOT related.
it is about reading unicode filenames from the local disk.
if i have an italian system and want to publish hebrew filenames, i can't.
i found it is very hard to solve because the treeview in delphi6 does not support unicode by itself.
anyway this problem is present in all above softwares too.
