Cannot open .wav file if path contains cyrillic characters

[MaximPylev]

SndBuf buf => dac;

// This will work: 
// "C:/Users/Public/Documents/Unity Projects/ChuckTest/Assets/StreamingAssets/impact.wav" => buf.read;
// This won't (because of words "афина" and "Новая папка" presumably): 
// "C:/Users/афина/Desktop/Новая папка/impact.wav" => buf.read;
// With console message:
// [chuck](via SndBuf): cannot open file 'C:/Users/афина/Desktop/Новая папка/impact.wav'...

while( true )
{
    // set playback position to beginning
    0 => buf.pos;
    // randomize playback rate
    Math.random2f(.75,1.25) => buf.rate;
    // randomize time
    500::ms => now;
}

Chuck version: 1.5.5.7
OS: Windows 10

[MaximPylev]

A workaround (I wouldn't dare call it a full-fledged solution) for anyone who encounters this problem (paths containing non-ASCII characters are invalid) in the future.

In short: we set the activeCodePage property to UTF-8 in the application manifest to force the process to use UTF-8 as the process code page.

I'll demonstrate the setup process using Chunity and miniAudicle as examples.

Chunity

In Chuck's code, we use two files:
"Аудио.wav" and "ChuckMIDITest.mid"

Let's build the project and place it in the following path:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Рыба\Ψάρι\魚

Now the file paths are:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Рыба\Ψάρι\魚ChuckTest_Data\StreamingAssets\Аудио.wav
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Рыба\Ψάρι\魚ChuckTest_Data\StreamingAssets\ChuckMIDITest.mid

When Chuck tries to open the files, these paths will simply be a gibberish and therefore invalid.

So the workaround is:

1. Create the application manifest snippet with the specified activeCodePage property:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
  <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="¤" version="1.0.0.0"/>
  <application>
    <windowsSettings>
      <activeCodePage xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2019/WindowsSettings">UTF-8</activeCodePage>
    </windowsSettings>
  </application>
</assembly>

(files ChuckTest.manifest and Snippet.manifest created manually)

2. Extract the existing application manifest from the .exe file.

> mt.exe -inputresource:ChuckTest.exe;1 -out:ChuckTest.manifest

3. If the extracted manifest is not empty:
   Insert the activeCodePage property from the snippet into the extracted manifest.

4. Embed the modified manifest OR the entire fragment if the extracted manifest is empty.

> mt.exe -manifest: ChuckTest.manifest -outputresource:ChuckTest.exe;1

We insert <activeCodePage> element (highlighted) inside <windowsSettings></windowsSettings> tags (as in snippet)

miniAudicle

The same algorithm as with Chunity.
But since the extracted manifest was empty, we use the entire snippet as the manifest for embedding.

(you will probably need to run command prompt as administrator and manage file and folder permissions for this one)

---

I would be grateful if someone could share their knowledge about the possible drawbacks of this workaround.

References

• C++ how to — make non-English text work in Windows
• Use UTF-8 code pages in Windows apps
• Application manifests
• Understanding manifest generation for C/C++ programs
• Mt.exe