Language rendering question

[scoder]

Hello!

Can you tell me if 2008Premier will render UniCode languages?

With UniCode, foreign languages other than the directly supported ones will also render the fonts correctly even if Windows systems are not configured to directly support the language.

Versus ANSI standards such as in IS12 (InstallScript, InstallScript MSI), if the language is not one of the 33 main supported ones then IS12/ANSI can't render that text and it shows "??" question-marks instead of text. (Unless we are missing some configuration trick).

Does 2008Premier have or not have this problem?

Thanks

[MichaelU]

This particular behavior has not been changed lately, although it is on our radar for possible future improvements. As I mentioned in a different thread, Basic MSIs should support additional languages much more cleanly; InstallScript doesn't do well at all with anything beyond the built in supported languages, and can have display issues when running on a machine configured to a different locale than the language chosen.

[MarkEarle]

Michael,

That being said, I have IS2008 Premier and it is supposed to have support for Chinese (Simplified) however it does not render the characters correctly in a combo box to choose the installed application's display language. I am getting the values from a UTF-8 file which has the correct symbols as the languages are shown in their native text. Does InstallShield render the characters correctly only based on a target systems' settings?

My project is InstallScript.

Cheers,

ME

[kilcarman]

Hi

I am having the same problem as you described in your post scoder and am wondering if you ever managed to get an answer from InstallShield to your simple question
"Does 2008Premier have or not have this problem?"

I also have 2008Premier (InstallScript project). I have created an installer with multiple language support. I have recently added Russian to the mix and cannot get Installshield to display the strings correctly in runtime dialogs.

The Russian strings display perfectly in the IDE string table, however there are some very strange inconsistencies across the IDE where the strings are displayed correctly in some places but not in others (eg In the Dialogs view - when editing a Text control which is stored in the String Table the "Edit String" dialog displays the extended characters as garbage).

Now, I have read literally hundreds of posts which seem to be in one way or another related to this issue, however I have not been able to get a conclusion to the simple question above: "Does 2008Premier have or not have this problem?"

I have seen the responses which say that I should change the "Language for non-Unicode programs" in the Advanced view in Regional Options, however this is not a sufficient solution for me.
My installer presents the language selection dialog as part of the install startup (which I have chosen to display from the Releases view). I need to be able to support installation of my installer on an English OS in any of my supported languages (including Russian). The solution of changing the Unicode setting in Regional Options is not sufficient for me - I have no guarantee that our customers will have this setting set accordingly or not (and the result of them not having it set is that the dialogs display garbage!!).

It is my understanding that this option in Regional Options is only relevant to non-unicode programs, and so we come back to the original question again:.....
"Can you tell me if 2008Premier will render UniCode languages?"

Any help appreciated... any words of wisdom from InstallShield representatives even more appreciated...

Thanks,
kilcarman

[ritulranjan]

I have IS2008 Premier.

The problem I am facing is somewhat similar:

• I have a multi-lingual installation with support for many languages (around 13 languages)
  
• I have enabled language selection dialog from "Releases"
  
• The installation works fine when I run the installation on Windows of language X, system locale set to language X and I select language X from the language selection dialog.
  
• However, when I select to run the installation in language Y (from language selection dialog box) on Windows of language X and system locale set to language X, the installation is unable to render fonts (even on Vista, which is supposed to have all Multi-Language Packs pre-installed) - the localized text is shown as "?"s indicating that the String Table was properly selected but the UI is unable to render it!
  

Is this a known issue? Any workarounds?

regards,
RR.

[kilcarman]

Hi
Coming back to this issue again with a trial version of the new InstallShield 2010 which has the following statement in its web page release notes:

"InstallShield 2010 takes a three-pronged approach to fully supporting modern multi-language installations:
Windows Installer databases can now be built in a Unicode format, InstallShield projects are now stored in a Unicode format, and the InstallShield interface now supports entering and viewing Unicode characters from multiple character sets at the same time."

I have tried it out and as far as I can see the issue with displaying unicode characters on an english OS.
For example, I have added support for Russian to my installer and imported Russian strings. Again, they display fine in the IDE (on an english os) but when I do an install on the same english OS and choose russian, the characters turn into garbage.

Anyone else tried out IS2010 yet and come across this?

Thanks

[kilcarman]

One important point that I forgot to mention is that I am using an InstallScript project type.

[MichaelU]

The InstallScript UI has not yet been updated to run as full Unicode, so in this regard IS2010 will perform similarly to IS2009 and IS2008, etc. We are hoping to make it Unicode in the future, but I have no timeline.