Unicode file names on Windows

Biodiverse can now handle unicode file names on Windows.

Previously if you had a file with a name like "mexaves 5 años mex.csv", "Havlærskilpadde.shp", "Grönfläckig padda.tif", or "Démonská kachna zkázy.xlsx" then it would fail to import.  This can be a considerable irritation if working on non-English locales.

The underlying details of why are better described elsewhere, but basically the file name passed by the GUI did not match the encoding scheme when the underlying Perl code went looking for it.

Thanks to the Win32::LongPath library we can work around this and use the full windows file name.

There are no screenshots for this post, but the implementation details can be seen here for those who are interested.

This also needs to be tested using CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters.  Please report issues if any are found.

Shawn Laffan
20-May-2019

If you want to try this out before version 3 is released then the 2.99_004 (or later) development release can be accessed through the downloads page at https://github.com/shawnlaffan/biodiverse/wiki/Downloads

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