About "untranslated" dialog strings on Non-German

[wmjordan]

I guess that i have gotten the reason for why we see so many strings in PL32 dialogs "untranslated" (still in German) even if we has selected the English as the PL32 working language.

PL32 uses several external string tables to dynamically patch strings displayed to the user. The responsible file for dialog strings is "%PhotoLine32Path%\hlp\English\Dialogs.stb". Two columns of strings are there in the file. The left column is in German, and the right in Engish. It seems that PL32 will try to match the German string first, and then replace the German string with the English one.

The problem maybe lies in here: Some German characters are not recognized by the Non-German Windows systems. Thus, those systems mis-decode the German string, and interpret them into another string, for example, the "Reset" in German, has become "R?cksetzen". Thus, PL32 will fail to patch those strings. And we see "untranslated" string there.

I guess that a workaround for that problem is to use control IDs in the string table, and replace the string according to the control ID, not its caption text.

However, i find it odd that the Preset string table works fine, only the Dialog string table fails.

[Gerhard Huber]

I guess that i have gotten the reason for why we see so many strings in PL32 dialogs "untranslated" (still in German) even if we has selected the English as the PL32 working language.
PL32 uses several external string tables to dynamically patch strings displayed to the user. The responsible file for dialog strings is "%PhotoLine32Path%\hlp\English\Dialogs.stb". Two columns of strings are there in the file. The left column is in German, and the right in Engish. It seems that PL32 will try to match the German string first, and then replace the German string with the English one.
The problem maybe lies in here: Some German characters are not recognized by the Non-German Windows systems. Thus, those systems mis-decode the German string, and interpret them into another string, for example, the "Reset" in German, has become "R?cksetzen". Thus, PL32 will fail to patch those strings. And we see "untranslated" string there.
I guess that a workaround for that problem is to use control IDs in the string table, and replace the string according to the control ID, not its caption text.
However, i find it odd that the Preset string table works fine, only the Dialog string table fails.

Yes, that's the problem. When there is a "special german" character that has to be translated, there is a problem.
We will try to fix this problem in the next version 10.51 of PL32 that will come out soon.

Gerhard

[wmjordan]

Yes, that's the problem. When there is a "special german" character that has to be translated, there is a problem.
We will try to fix this problem in the next version 10.51 of PL32 that will come out soon.

Gerhard

Thanks very much! And I have translated about 30% of the biggest String.str file into Chinese. Hopefully, the translation will come out after the next version of PL32. At that time, PL32 will support one more language. ^_^v

[Gerhard Huber]

Thanks very much! And I have translated about 30% of the biggest String.str file into Chinese. Hopefully, the translation will come out after the next version of PL32. At that time, PL32 will support one more language. ^_^v

You can download now from
ftp.pl32.net/pl321051.exe
I hope it works.

Gerhard

[wmjordan]

You can download now from
ftp.pl32.net/pl321051.exe
I hope it works.

Gerhard

Yeah, I have downloaded it. I uninstalled the old 10.50, and then
installed the 10.51. But i am quite sorry to say that it does not
work :[ In the dialogs, label strings with German charaters are
still in German.

Perhaps we have to use the ID of the label to patch the strings.
For example, nowadays, an entry in the string table file is

":Datei"="File";

Is it possible to use label control IDs

ID_LABEL_FILE="File";

or

123244="File"; // ID_LABEL_FILE

instead? Woe... this seems to be a very tough task... a small
conversion utility should be programmed to do this job.

[Gerhard Huber]

Yeah, I have downloaded it. I uninstalled the old 10.50, and then installed the 10.51. But i am quite sorry to say that it does not work :[ In the dialogs, label strings with German charaters are
still in German.
Perhaps we have to use the ID of the label to patch the strings.
For example, nowadays, an entry in the string table file is
":Datei"="File";
Is it possible to use label control IDs
ID_LABEL_FILE="File";
or
123244="File"; // ID_LABEL_FILE
instead? Woe... this seems to be a very tough task... a small
conversion utility should be programmed to do this job.

If it doesn't work, I want to ask you some things:
- which version of Windows do you use?
- which language version of Windows do you use?
- can you send me a "test stringtable" to support@pl32.com
- give me an example of a special dialog that doesn't work

Bye the way, we won't change the string table entries to IDs because it's to much work.

Gerhard

[wmjordan]

If it doesn't work, I want to ask you some things:
- which version of Windows do you use?
- which language version of Windows do you use?
- can you send me a "test stringtable" to support@pl32.com
- give me an example of a special dialog that doesn't work

Bye the way, we won't change the string table entries to IDs because it's to much work.

Gerhard

I am using
Windows 2000 Pro SP4,
Simplified Chinese

It seems that it is unnecessary for me to send you "test string table" now, since the ORIGINAL English, Dutch, and Franch string tables all fail to work on my machine, even though i modify zero bit of them.

I will email you, attaching several screenshots about the "untranslated" dialogs.

[Gerhard Huber]

If it doesn't work, I want to ask you some things:
- which version of Windows do you use?
- which language version of Windows do you use?
- can you send me a "test stringtable" to support@pl32.com
- give me an example of a special dialog that doesn't work
Bye the way, we won't change the string table entries to IDs because it's to much work.

I am using
Windows 2000 Pro SP4,
Simplified Chinese
It seems that it is unnecessary for me to send you "test string table" now, since the ORIGINAL English, Dutch, and Franch string tables all fail to work on my machine, even though i modify zero bit of them.
I will email you, attaching several screenshots about the "untranslated" dialogs.

What we did for version 10.51:
- we setup korean on our Windows XP
- we setup PL32 to "English"
- we checked all dialogs an all was in English
We used functions for the changes that will only work on Windows NT/2000/XP, so it should work on your computer.
I would prefer to get a string table file from you to test what happens here with Chinese text

I tried now to setup Chinese on my computer. But there is no "Simplified Chinese". There is only "Chinese - Hongkong", "Chinese - Macao", "Chinese - Singapur", "Chinese - Taiwan" and "Chinese - VR China".

Gerhard

[wmjordan]

What we did for version 10.51:
- we setup korean on our Windows XP
- we setup PL32 to "English"
- we checked all dialogs an all was in English
We used functions for the changes that will only work on Windows NT/2000/XP, so it should work on your computer.
I would prefer to get a string table file from you to test what happens here with Chinese text

I tried now to setup Chinese on my computer. But there is no "Simplified Chinese". There is only "Chinese - Hongkong", "Chinese - Macao", "Chinese - Singapur", "Chinese - Taiwan" and "Chinese - VR China".

Gerhard

I installed PL32 on a Windows XP (Simplified Chinese) machine, quite the same, some strings failed to be patched.

I have sent an email to support@pl32.com, attaching a screenshot of a "partially translated" dialog, and a screenshot of the dialog.stb opened in Windows NotePad which might illustrate how German characters might be improperly interpreted as Chinese characters by the system (I also opened the string table file with EditPlus and some other unicode supported text editors, the file looked quite the same, German characters failed to be displayed as they should be).

And i guess that if there are German characters, which have ASCII codes greater than 127, in a string, the string table algorithm will fail, since the system might treat a character ASCII code greater than 127 and the one that follows as one single Chinese character. Thus, the patching fails.

You might setup the Chinese - PR China (People's Republic of China) to get simplified Chinese. Is the "VR China" a misspell?

Yeah, it, theoretically, should work here as it does on the Korean system... but... it does not actually... Don't know why...