anonymousJS 12 Posted March 17, 2019 Share Posted March 17, 2019 I've recently discovered a new way to unzip zipped files that contain Japanese filenames that doesn't require changing the system locale and can optionally forego needing admin privileges. This method uses two programs, Locale Emulator by xupefei and 7-Zip. Both programs can be easily found on Google. This method only works with the 32-bit x86 version of 7-Zip and has only been tested with version 2.4.0.0 of Locale Emulator. Install Locale Emulator Install the 32-bit x86 version of 7-Zip. See alternate instructions if you lack administrative privileges. In C:\Program Files (x86)\7-Zip, delete the Lang folder Right click on 7zFM.exe Select Locale Emulator > Run in Japanese. 7-Zip's file browser should appear in English. Navigate to the file you wish to extract and extract normally Alternate instructions for unprivileged users Install Locale Emulator Download 7-Zip Portable from PortableApps.com Run the executable and select a suitable folder for the pseudo-installation In that folder, go to Apps\7-Zip and delete the Lang folder Continue from step 4 of the normal instructions (Optional) Make a shortcut Make a shortcut for LEProc.exe located in Locale Emulator's installation folder Copy the full path to 7zFM.exe Right click on the shortcut created in step 1 and open Properties In the Target field, add a space at the end before pasting the path to 7zFM.exe (Optional) Change the icon Click Change Icon... Say Ok to the warning prompt Clear out the text field at the top and paste the path to 7zFM.exe Click outside of the text field to update the available icons Select an icon Please let me know if you find this useful and if you have any problems getting this to work. Link to comment
anonymousJS 12 Posted March 22, 2019 Author Share Posted March 22, 2019 (edited) Unicode is not required (or seemingly used by default) for ZIP files. I tested this in Windows and mounted my testing setup briefly to Linux to verify a problem someone was asking about. On both systems, the names of extracted Japanese files were garbled when extracted normally and appeared in Japanese when extracted as such. Windows just makes extracting in Japanese much harder somehow. In Linux, the fix turned out to be unzip -O shift-jis. On Windows, even the CLI of 7-Zip is limited in what character encodings it can use for console output and list input and is unable to control the encoding used to unzip a file. The only officially supported way of changing the locale used to unzip files is to change the "Language for non-Unicode programs" aka the system locale. Since this is a system value, changing it requires a restart of the system and Administrator privileges which is a pain if you don't want to stick with the Japanese locale which has some mildly irritating side effects for English users. Edited March 22, 2019 by anonymousJS Realized that I was rambling techno-babble and decided to clean it up (see edit history) Link to comment
liesjeversteven 1,826 Posted June 4, 2019 Share Posted June 4, 2019 I just right click and select unpack here. Done. But I'm on Ubuntu Linux. I wasn't even aware Windoze had a problem with that. Link to comment
anonymousJS 12 Posted June 6, 2019 Author Share Posted June 6, 2019 Yeah, Windows likes to fight you sometimes. My best guess (pure speculation) is that the default zip library only obeys the registry heedless of how the file is encoded or if the caller wishes to specify an encoding. Link to comment
Recommended Posts