I am using Windows 10 with a Cyrillic username ("Андрей"). The Windows installer version (ACE-Step.UI.Setup.*.exe) forces all data paths to be inside C:\Users\Андрей\AppData\Local\Programs\ and C:\Users\Андрей\AppData\Roaming.
Since my username contains Cyrillic characters, the underlying binaries fail to read or write files from these paths. The logs show that Cyrillic letters are misinterpreted as garbage characters (������), which causes the following error:
gguf_init_from_file: failed to open GGUF file 'C:\Users\������\AppData\Roaming\acestep-cpp-ui\models...' (No such file or directory)
The real issue
The installer forces the app to use %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA% which inherently contain the Windows username. If the username has Cyrillic (or any non-ASCII) characters, the core binaries cannot handle it.
Request
Provide a portable (zip) version for Windows — no installer, no forced paths to AppData. The entire application (config, models, logs) should be self-contained in a single folder that the user can place on a drive without Cyrillic characters (e.g., E:\acestep-cpp-ui).
Why this is important
Many users on non-English Windows installations have Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic, or other non-ASCII characters in their usernames. Without a portable version or Unicode support, the app is unusable for them.
Thank you for your great work!
I am using Windows 10 with a Cyrillic username ("Андрей"). The Windows installer version (ACE-Step.UI.Setup.*.exe) forces all data paths to be inside C:\Users\Андрей\AppData\Local\Programs\ and C:\Users\Андрей\AppData\Roaming.
Since my username contains Cyrillic characters, the underlying binaries fail to read or write files from these paths. The logs show that Cyrillic letters are misinterpreted as garbage characters (������), which causes the following error:
gguf_init_from_file: failed to open GGUF file 'C:\Users\������\AppData\Roaming\acestep-cpp-ui\models...' (No such file or directory)
The real issue
The installer forces the app to use %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA% which inherently contain the Windows username. If the username has Cyrillic (or any non-ASCII) characters, the core binaries cannot handle it.
Request
Provide a portable (zip) version for Windows — no installer, no forced paths to AppData. The entire application (config, models, logs) should be self-contained in a single folder that the user can place on a drive without Cyrillic characters (e.g., E:\acestep-cpp-ui).
Why this is important
Many users on non-English Windows installations have Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic, or other non-ASCII characters in their usernames. Without a portable version or Unicode support, the app is unusable for them.
Thank you for your great work!