Bug 508749

Summary:	Massive issues with filenames not in UTF-8
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	office
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs <unassigned-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	normal	CC:	hadichokr, kdedev, nicolas.fella
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	openSUSE
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description office 2025-08-26 08:04:19 UTC

***
If you're not sure this is actually a bug, instead post about it at https://discuss.kde.org

If you're reporting a crash, attach a backtrace with debug symbols; see https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Debugging/How_to_create_useful_crash_reports

Please remove this comment after reading and before submitting - thanks!
***

SUMMARY

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Do a plain install of "openSUSE Leap 15.6" (this also applies to older versions, so version is not so important, I think)
2. Install all official updates, too.
3. Enter YaST2 -> System -> Language
Select there "Primary Language = German", then click "Details" and UNCHECK UTF-8 Encoding.
Store settings and reboot system. (System is now using de_DE@euro )
4. In former runlevel 3 the system shows now locales set to de_DE@euro everywhere, and everything is running fine.
5. In KDE I have to configure the profile of XFREE -> Extended -> Default-Char-Encoding to ISO-8859-15. otherwise the konsole still encodes in UTF-8.
I also have to edit ~/.config/plasma-localerc and enter there de_DE@euro instead of de_DE.UTF-8

Now everything is set to iso-8859-1[5]

OBSERVED RESULT
KDE shows filenames containing German Umlauts garbled.
Example: a filename "würde.txt" appears as "w<?>rde.txt" in Dolphin. ("<?>" is one character)

Trying to open the file (containing the string "Hallo, schöne Welt") opens an empty file (because kate receives a faulty filename, it starts a new file)

Renaming the filename "würde.txt" -> "wuerde.txt" makes kate open the file. kate correctlöy shows encoding ISO-8859-15 and shows the string correctly, so the problem is only related to the filename.

EXPECTED RESULT
I would expect that KDE is able to correctly detect the locale setting of Linux. If this is not UTF-8, it shall also use a character translation.
I do not care about how KDE is internally working. if it internally uses only UTF-8, it has to convert filenames between locale settings and UTF-8 as a step in between. This fix was always possible in all previous versions of KDE (but not done by me).

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Windows:
macOS:
(available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window)
Linux/KDE Plasma:
KDE Plasma Version:
KDE Frameworks Version:
Qt Version:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Comment 1 Nicolas Fella 2025-08-26 10:11:14 UTC

What you are doing is not supported, sorry

Comment 2 Hadi Chokr 2025-08-26 12:21:25 UTC

(In reply to Nicolas Fella from comment #1)
> What you are doing is not supported, sorry

Could we support it? Or is there some technical limitation?

Comment 3 office 2025-08-26 12:55:10 UTC

(In reply to Hadi Chokr from comment #2)
> (In reply to Nicolas Fella from comment #1)
> > What you are doing is not supported, sorry
> 
> Could we support it? Or is there some technical limitation?

From my point of view it should be possible with limited amount of effort.  But I am no developer, this massively exceeds my skills.

When writing programs in FreePascal (this is what I actually do), I run filenames through a little function that does a translation. Nothing else should be necessary (so I _guess_) to do in the file browser. Translate filenamed into UTF-8 (IIRC there are existing libraries for that) when reading a directory, and translate back to the locale encoding before writing/creating a file/directory.

So I think/guess/assume there is for sure a point where a similar functionality can be hooked in in KDE, too.