Special characters in filename for album art.

[tdtooke]

Basically I'm wanting to know if anybody knows how I can have a filename of something like "Krankenhaus?.bmp" for cover art.  Once I found a way to get a file with a name like that onto my ipod by using media monkey with that script for the ipod to scan my ipod and copy the cover art to a folder on my hard drive.  Albums with those symbols in the names had their art shown as having an underscore for those characters on windows, though they were really named with the symbols.  I've tried to use linux to copy over files to my ipod named this way but can't, can't save a file name like that to a fat formatted disk my windows partion can read either.  I can of course save it to a ext2/3 formatted disk but I don't know how to get windows to read that.  From before I know once the file is actually on windows I can transfer it over.  Anybody know how I can do this short of reinstalling media monkey as before and using itunes to put cover art on that and extracting it as before?  I really don't want to do all that and since Media Monkey can name files this way therefore it must be somehow possible.

[safetydan]

The FAT filesystem has a limit on the characters that filenames can have. For example, you cannot have a * a ? or a : in a filename on a FAT formatted drive. There is nothing Rockbox can do about this.

[tdtooke]

I fully understand that, and I don't want "Rockbox" to do anything about it.  I just thought that since what I described can be done by media monkey then it must be possible and maybe someone might know a way to do it short of using media monkey the way I described.

Edit: ex: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?.bmp is in fact on my ipod through the aforementioned media monkey method.

[Llorean]

FAT32 can't support those filenames. It is impossible to put them on a Rockbox player without them being renamed to something FAT32 can support.

[DeanMurray]

You could rename the image as cover.bmp and place it in the same directory as the music file to display your album art.

[safetydan]

@tdtooke, are you saying that you can actually browse to a file with a question mark in it using the Files menu in Rockbox? Or is it visible as a question mark in Windows Explorer when you connect the player to your computer?

[tdtooke]

If you browse it in rockbox that file shows up as "Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer_.bmp".  However if you rename it just by deleting that underscore and typing another underscore it no longer shows as album art in the WPS so that underscore is clearly no ordinary underscore.  I have seen other examples on windows where things named in a manner fat does not support show underscores for things.  You also can't have a folder named ".something" on windows either, but I do it all the time.  I'm going to perform an experiment by putting cygwin back on my windows partition and get back with you guys.  I think I've figured out how I need to do this.

[Llorean]

"Windows" and "FAT32" are two different things. FAT32 does not support ? in filenames. FAT32 is perfectly happy with folders starting with a period, Windows just stupidly doesn't let you create one.

Please, to avoid confusion in this conversation, learn where the restriction is being applies (filesystem, or stupid operating system) and be explicit in your statements.

[tdtooke]

I know what "windows" is, I also know what "fat32" is.  To avoid further confusion I've decided this is not the best place to seek this answer.  I am confident in the assertion: If media monkey can do it, I can do it.  I just don't know how yet.

[Llorean]

You'll find out that those special characters are not being transferred to the drive. While it may not be an _, it won't be an invalid character. Mediamonkey cannot magically force FAT32 to support characters it doesn't support.

And "windows" allows folder names starting with . just fine. It just doesn't let you *create* them in Explorer. The command prompt does. So, this is why I'm asking you to try to avoid confusion: You've made statements that suggest you don't know where the problem is occurring, but you seem to think you know. When asking for help, it's not wise to assume you know more than other people. It's not wise to assume they're right, but you need to at least be willing to listen when they tell you you're getting something wrong.

[tdtooke]

Stop trying to read into everything.  If I think I know more than you I'll let you know in no uncertain terms, I don't play the game of subtlety.  At any rate I'm going to pursue this with the media monkey community, I think that would be best for everybody.

[bascule]

Are you sure that MediaMonkey isn't just displaying the filename with a '?', because it knows that it had to change it and therefore renders the '?' when showing you the filename, even though it actually wrote '_' to the filesystem?

[pixelma]

That made me think about...

If you browse it in rockbox that file shows up as "Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer_.bmp".  However if you rename it just by deleting that underscore and typing another underscore it no longer shows as album art in the WPS so that underscore is clearly no ordinary underscore.

It could be that MediaMonkey replaces the ? with a character that's not in the font you're using, possibly one rare character which it always uses as question mark (so "recognises" agin) but one which is valid in FAT32. Then the "unknown character" will be used which usually looks like a box but how it looks is also part of the font - maybe the "unknown character" looks more like an underscore in your font. What if you change the font to unifont (which has the most characters by far)?

[Llorean]

That's actually what I was thinking might be happening too, pixelma. That would explain why replacing it with a normal _ didn't have the album art show anymore, since the song filename was still the specialized character.

[blueskip]

I think you guys are talking about apples and oranges.  

I actually think I know the answer to the question posed.  MediaMonkey displays what the tag contains not the file name.  The tag may have special characters because Windows ignores it.  I have several that way myself.  I changed them mainly due to the fact most were in another language I didn't speak.  (those are indeed the font issue described)  

That said, I have never tried to use MediaMonkey to write those tagnames to the file so I can't answer the question of what it would look like in Windows Explorer in that case.  I agree that those particular charactrers aren't supported so it shouldn't happen.  BUT I have downloaded files that had invalid file names (not necessarily music) from other type systems that I even had a hard time deleting because Windows would basicly freak out on the structure of the name.