>> - image files with non-ANSI pathnames (*) cannot be viewed as
>> graphics due to defects in the APIs and libraries being used;
>
> Wouldn't it be possible to provide the defective libraries with the
> short file names? They shouldn't have problems with those...

That would be one possibility, indeed. Don't like it too much, since (a) SFNs are technically not guaranteed to always exist, though I reckon they usually do, and (b) accessing the same file through both names would complicate some internal housekeeping. Maybe also (c) one of the offenders is MS's own OleLoadPictureFile, and I just don't feel like wasting much time on a broken mis-documented API ;-)

There are a few alternatives to remove that ANSI limitation, which I am currently weighing.

Cheers,
Liviu