iCab 3.0 beta filename truncation bugs

With iCab 3.0 betas (persisting through ß251) under Mac OS X, iCab truncates filenames at 31 characters—the character limit of pre-HFS Extended filesystems—for any item downloaded via the Download Manager or any image saved by dragging to the desktop or to another folder.

These bugs often cause "broken" filenames when files, images, pages, or entire sites are downloaded via the Download Manager and require more complex actions to preserve image file names when dragging to the desktop might otherwise suffice. Mac OS X supports filename lengths of up to 255 characters (the HFS Extended limit) and Mac OS 9 will preserve (but not display) filenames with lengths up to the same limit.

However, any item saved directly, i.e. by invoking cmd-s or , or the item in the contextual menu, retains the original filename (or page title, for web archives) if longer than 31 characters.

Update: The Download Manager was fixed in ß400; currently only drag-and-drop of images still truncates filenames.

Testcases

Drag the following image to the desktop, or download it via the Download Manager.

The resulting filename will be let_icab_smile_but_very_lon.gif rather than the file's full name of let_icab_smile_but_very_long_name.gif.

Now click this link to view the image directly.
Then
- invoke cmd-s or File: Save As… or
- invoke the Image: Save As… item in the contextual menu

The resulting filename will be the file's full name of let_icab_smile_but_very_long_name.gif, as expected.

N.B. Using cmd-s or File: Save As… while viewing the image directly actually reveals an additional bug wherein the entire URL is suggested as the filename rather than simply the image name itself.

Work-arounds

Always use cmd-s or File: Save As… when saving HTML documents
Always use the Image: Save As… item in the contextual menu when saving images
Manually rename all files with the full filename from the URL as stored in the Finder comments

Last updated: 2006-03-31