Driss-A-Blog

With files named with certain characters (particularly Eastern European), Retrospect 5 fails to back them up. I don't mean to be pedantic, but this is a data loss bug. The point of a backup program is to execute a reliable backup. If you can't manage that, why bother?

From: "Michelle Parent" <michelle_parent*dantz.com>
To: "Avi Drissman" <drissman*acm.org>
Subject: RE: Retrospect Preview 5.0 for Macintosh OS X
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 14:08:30 -0800
Importance: Normal

Hi Avi, thank you for the image! I was able to reproduce the error and have
logged the defect. It appears that retrospect is having problems with some
of the Czech characters. In the case of the Dvorák file, if you remove the
"r" then the file will backup properly (and the á will be displayed
properly).

Thanks again, -Michelle

From: Avi Drissman [mailto:drissman*acm.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 3:34 PM
To: Michelle Parent
Subject: RE: Retrospect Preview 5.0 for Macintosh OS X

At 2:08 PM -0800 2/6/02, you wrote:

>In the case of the Dvorák file, if you remove the
>"r" then the file will backup properly (and the á will be displayed
>properly).

Well, probably true, but that's not how Dvorák spelled his name, and
I don't really want to rename my files.

Is this due to be fixed?

Avi

From: "Michelle Parent" <michelle_parent*dantz.com>
To: "Avi Drissman" <drissman*acm.org>
Subject: RE: Retrospect Preview 5.0 for Macintosh OS X
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 16:18:57 -0800
Importance: Normal

Yes, I logged a defect and it should be fixed in a future
lease. -Michelle

Now, of course, it's two years later, and the latest version of Retrospect 5 still chokes if you feed it a file with "Dvořák" in its name. Maybe they've finally figured out how to use the APIs introduced back in OS 9 for Unicode file names.