Path written like T60N19~N when non-US-ASCII chars in title and using title token in path

I appologize for being unsure what module to file this under, but here goes... (I'm in a big bind here, so please direct me to a more appropriate place if this is midirected)

Files are being written to the filesytem with paths like T60N19~N, TWA3Z8~S, etc. when I use a non-US-ASCII character in my noe title. Sort of seems like 8.3 format, but no .nnn suffix.

I'm using:
- Drupal 6.10
- Token 1.11
- Pathauto 1.1
- CCK 2.2 (but seeing under 2.1 also)
- cck Filefield 3.0-RC1 (but seeing under 3.0-alpha7 also)
- cck Filefield_paths 1.0
- Transliteration 2.0

I had been trying to fix a problem with File descriptions and sizes not being show in node View. So reading forums I found chat about FileField meta deleteing descriptions, and when asking about formal careful upgrade proceedure QuickSketch said that through FF alpha/beta the theme API had been changing so uprage to RC1. So I did, but I forgot to backup my DB beforehand.

My site is designed to have two content-types: Projects and sets. Thru node-reference, any Set must be assigned to a Project. Both have Filefields and some are setto unlimited. When attaching files, Filefield_paths is setup to organize files (create a tree) by user, project, and set. So my path is:

[user]/[field_project-title]/[title]

Prior to launch, I struggled with Tranliteration and Pathauto. When Pathauto to clean up the paths and filenames I found that if a user tried to attache more than 2-3 files then PHP would suffer a recursion upon node Save, and upping allowed php memory and execution time just made it wait longer and crash later.

I also found that Tranliteration wouldn't remove the spaces from path, just filename (with both eneabled).

So I settled on a hack on filefield_paths that somebody wrote in #324736 which simply resorts to giving up on Transliteration and Pathauto and hardcoding str_replace in filefield_paths.module and. (more in #311562, and Deciphered was there, but I believe his fixes are in Dev and are too complex to patch; and more in #421058) (I write these thread #'s in shorthand because inline links are a bit distracting).

So, when I upgraded CCK to 2.2 and Filefield to RC1, and reverted the Filefield_paths hack, I revisited Pathauto and Transliteration. Same -- still no spaces removed from paths (translit.), and recursion (pathauto).

Then it occurred to me to check non-ascii chars in Project titles, which I had not done before. Instead of seeing FFP generate the dir'name "Non-ascii project title:" (note the ":" character), I got T60N19~N on my filesystem. So I disabled any path/filename cleaning, tested more, but still got the same 8-character path.

So I tried it on my live server (without changing anything -- using the filefield_paths.module hack, and Transliteration module is enabled, but not selected under filefield_paths) ---- There it doesn't create the 8[.3] dir., but instead I get "Non-ascii project title:".

Since I hadn't backed up my QA db prior to updating CCK/FF I can't revert this QA site instance, so I broke out a ~1-week old instance, and again I see the same TWA3Z8~S format.

This is very confusing, becasue I can't think of anything that's different between these two with respect to Token/CCK/FF/FFP, and settings.

So, has anyone seen this 8[.3] name shortening on Filefield_paths in combination with Token or anything else? I'm hoping that this behavior will be recognized by someone and they can point in a direction.

Any other general advice?

Thanks in advance!