XP - Truly multilingual environment?

[Daphne]

Does anyone use more than one or two languages on WinXP?

As translation school student, I have to use english, german, and chinese on my pc. I have no problem with my apps, since they all have an english interface. The real problem rises when I have to manage different folders and files labeled with original foreign names. Though I can read them on Windows Explorer, I cannot open them into some apps, like Acrobat.

The only workaround I have is to change the setting in Regional and Language Options>Advanced>language of non-Unicode programs. But, if I choose eg Chinese I have to restart WinXP, but then I can't read the folders or files named in German, you know, because ü, ä, ß become chinese characters...

The second annoying thing is why should I ever have to use a feature thought for foreign version PROGRAMS (my acrobat is english) in order to get foreign file names opened in an english language app???

I don't know if you have already experienced this, or I missed something... For now, I only think MS should speak of By-choice-BIlingual interfaces instead of MULTIlingual tools...

Thanx for any feedback.

[catgate]

Feed back you want? Well ponder this. Why is it that Gates and his bunch of ne'r-do-wells always insist that they are using "English"? Why do they not own up to the fact that they, as "Americans", are using "American" and spoiling "English". We are constantly bombarded by, and are accepting, so many damn stupid phrases and word. Recently, everywhere you look (or so it seems) there are OUTAGES of one sort or another. Why are there no INAGES, or UPAGES, or DOWNAGES or even ONAGES. Why is it also necessary to constantly use those fatuous acronyms that they can dream up faster than a president can put his foot in his mouth?

Can you be sure that if you were able to switch effortlessly from one language to another, as you wish, you would not end up with say "American Chinese", and would you really want that????

[Daphne]

Aaah, dunno wuda answer firsd.

Let me explain one thing beforehand: I'm not concerned about switching from one language to another on WinXP. I meant, I want access to every file notwithstanding the characters of its name. And, if possible to open Chinese labeled pdfs.

(Now, @ Catgate. First, wow :notworthy: , then mmhh :confused: . I have comprehension for what you're saying. Although I'm not British (Or should I properly say, neither English nor Scot nor Welsh, and so on). In America some dozens of words are invented every year to designate things which already do have a name in English, and some others that don't. That may seem stupid for some. Now, if you feel injured by that I should say that's their way of thinking. English is not a language they adopted by chance, and it's also legitimate if they do like that. There are 4 times more Americans than British and they also have a very active cultural production that overrides our humble European one since the 1920s. Now for English, I have problems to recognise/ze who's talking and try to adapt myself with the pass of time. But I must tell you, specially in London and in some scenes and under "youngsters" English is evolving very like American English and that's not American cultural influence. C'mon, most British Stars do not longer speak broadcasting English. There's eg the traditional and progresive R shift in pronuntiation, and regarding terminology, Catgate, we'll getting global!. In some web fora you'll find Germans typing American English like the Bronx Brothers. If I were you, I'd be proud of having the Americans speaking your language. But I'd also require them to show more respect for other languages. Diversity is Wealth. Thanx for replying)

[catgate]

that's their way of thinking.

Well that's an original idea As far as I was aware very few of them could. Very many of them do not know which way they are facing. Just look how they all have their baseball caps on wrongway round.

There are 4 times more Americans than British

No, I do not agree with that. The vast number of them are European refugees and drop-outs, with a sprinkling of Far Eastern people thrown in for good measure. Most of the true Americans were consigned to reservations by the original English drop outs and opportunists

If I were you, I'd be proud of having the Americans speaking your language.

My point was that they are not speaking "my language". They are speaking their own polyglot version of a tongue based originally on English, but with additions from various part of the globe, and they then have the arrogence to call it English and try to force it, along with the rest of their less than savoury culture and "democracy", on the rest of the world.

and that's not American cultural influence.

I find it virtually impossible to think of any activity, in any part of the globe, that is not, to a greater or lesser extent, affected by American cultural influence, and if those running America, who are clever enough to let their "leader" think that he is, get their way, there will be nothing left of the world but Greater America......heaven forbid.

But then... what do I know...I'm just a rancid old Englishman.

[Scarecrow Man]

My point was that they are not speaking "my language". They are speaking their own polyglot version of a tongue based originally on English, but with additions from various part of the globe, and they then have the arrogence to call it English and try to force it, along with the rest of their less than savoury culture and "democracy", on the rest of the world.

Canadians too?

[catgate]

Canadians too?

I have a great admiration for the Canadians. They have lived for so long in such close proximity to America without catching anything really serious. I suspect it is because they are a more resiliant people and they have not totally cut the cord. It may also have something to do with the fact that most baseball caps that are in Canada seem to have the "neb" sewn on at the front, and also your policemen wear boy scout hats!

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Does anyone use more than one or two languages on WinXP?

As translation school student, I have to use english, german, and chinese on my pc. I have no problem with my apps, since they all have an english interface. The real problem rises when I have to manage different folders and files labeled with original foreign names. Though I can read them on Windows Explorer, I cannot open them into some apps, like Acrobat.

The only workaround I have is to change the setting in Regional and Language Options>Advanced>language of non-Unicode programs. But, if I choose eg Chinese I have to restart WinXP, but then I can't read the folders or files named in German, you know, because ü, ä, ß become chinese characters...

The second annoying thing is why should I ever have to use a feature thought for foreign version PROGRAMS (my acrobat is english) in order to get foreign file names opened in an english language app???

I don't know if you have already experienced this, or I missed something... For now, I only think MS should speak of By-choice-BIlingual interfaces instead of MULTIlingual tools...

Thanx for any feedback.

Ok, back to your original question. I use English, German, French, and Japanese on my Windows XP. I do not have any problems. I can open documents with German or Japanese names - at least with Microsoft Word I can.

But I just created two PDF documents - one with a German name, and one with a Japanese name. You are right; Acrobat (or Adobe Reader) cannot open the Japanese named document (no problem with the German one).

So it is not really a problem with Windows XP, but with certain 3rd party applications that cannot handle Unicode.

[scuzzman]

Yes, it would seem as though there is a problem with Acrobat, and you may wish to look into a different PDF client...

I hope this isn't confirming the already posted, but I don't think there is a piece of software capable of doing what you wish.

I've not a word to say on the rest of this conversation...

[Daphne]

Thank you all for every reply you've made. (I apologize for giving raise here to a conversation that for its importance should be placed or followed in the convenient OFF TOPIC section of the WF. Anyway, it's an interesting matter).

it is not really a problem with Windows XP, but with certain 3rd party applications that cannot handle Unicode.

I fully agree. But MS products ought to interact problemless with any other 3rd party software. At any rate, Adobe is not a freaky ware developer. But, are you sure Acrobat is unable to handle unicode?

BTW, I have Win98SE at home with NJStar on it. This prog just displays in Chinese what otherwise can be actually read under Windows as "À©Õ¹.pdf" when I switch NJStar off. And I was always able to open it without any problems in Acrobar Reader - With or Without Njstar enabled. I am anything but a pro in these matters. But this is the fact that let me think the present problem has to do with the way WinXP handles the codes. From a non-event under win98 it passed to a necessary switch of XP interface and restart.:wallbash:

it would seem as though there is a problem with Acrobat, and you may wish to look into a different PDF client...

I had to stick to Acrobat (I have the full 5.05 version) since 1) it was very handy for creating pdfs; 2) has that OCR feature, and 3) gave a good compression rate. Would you recommend me a comparable replacement, please? I am aware of some, but never got insight into them. Maybe it helps me out.

[scuzzman]

Well, you might look into an open-source PDF writer, but for a reader, there this. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a decent free writer for you (preferably one open-source (GPL'ed) to secure against spyware -- with a Windows port).

[scuzzman]

CutePDF looks promising.

A few reviews:

"Cute Indeed"

This is the blessing I've been waiting for. Very simple. very good!

"Excellent SIMPLE and PROBLEM FREE"

I have used many of these kind of Programs even one supplied by Adobe and I can tell you I have had many hardships with those programs. But this little Program has Consistently Printed All that I wanted to Print WITH OUT EVEN 1 ERROR - even for the documents that the Adobe PDF printer crashed on!!! COOL BEANS... COOL COOL COOL COOL!"

You might also look into this page for other ideas.

[Daphne]

(For that conversation

http://www.windowsforum.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=17615)

[Daphne]

Thanks Scuzzman!! Im looking your links. Hope u find a writer too. I fostered the Adobe forums. The newer Acrobat versions do also suffer under the same symptomes. As far as I read, Pwillener is right in some extent. But still think it's MS code management.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

...

it is not really a problem with Windows XP, but with certain 3rd party applications that cannot handle Unicode.

I fully agree. But MS products ought to interact problemless with any other 3rd party software. At any rate, Adobe is not a freaky ware developer. But, are you sure Acrobat is unable to handle unicode?

BTW, I have Win98SE at home with NJStar on it. This prog just displays in Chinese what otherwise can be actually read under Windows as "À©Õ¹.pdf" when I switch NJStar off. And I was always able to open it without any problems in Acrobar Reader - With or Without Njstar enabled. I am anything but a pro in these matters. But this is the fact that let me think the present problem has to do with the way WinXP handles the codes. From a non-event under win98 it passed to a necessary switch of XP interface and restart.:wallbash:

...

The multilingual issue, especially when multibyte languages are concerned, is a difficult one, and one that really cannot be blamed on Microsoft. The issue began long before MS even existed. The various encodings (Chinese GB2312, Big5, ISO-2022-CN, or Japanese JIS, ShiftJIS, ISO-2022-JP, and many others) cannot simply be combined and/or replaced with Unicode. Maybe they will, some day, but today all these different encodings exist and are widely used.

In the days of Win9x we couldn't use MBCS languages without tools like NJStar. Today Windows can handle a wide array of languages (or writings), and I don't use NJStar any more.

But applications are a different matter. An application written for Japanese Windows can recognize all kinds of Japanese encodings, including Unicode; the same is true for Chinese applications. But an application written for English Windows must be written specifically to handle all kinds of encodings; otherwise it simply won't work. (And to make matters even more complicated, in order to display various languages correctly, it must be able to choose the right fonts).

If Unicode had existed from the early days of multilingual computing we wouldn't have any of these problems. It does exist now, but it will take time to unify everything under Unicode; but we are on the right track.

Let me ask you one thing: when you create a Chinese language document, do you use Unicode? Or the traditional Chinese encodings?

[Added] As for Acrobat not being able to open multibyte filenames - this really is Adobe's problem. It expects the filename to be single-byte, and treats it accordingly. Once you rip a doublebyte character apart into two single bytes, the data is no longer valid (remember "À©Õ¹.pdf"?). You may try Acrobat 7.0 - perhaps they have corrected it by now?

[tschless]

I had the same problem some time ago. WinXP/SP2 English default w/Chinese Simplified - Chinese - Korean and Japanese. Acrobat 7.0 still does not use unicode. You still need to swith the language for non unicode programs to the appropriate language and reboot.

All Microsoft programs in Office 2003 work fine with Unicode, the problem is with the programs that don't support Unicode. I have the problem with WinZip and Acrobat 7.0.

You would expect Adobe which is used around the world to support Unicode but I called them and their answer was "No, not yet".

[Daphne]

Thanks pwillener! I now have a better grasp of the single, double, and multi-byte codes story.

Yes, "À©Õ¹.pdf" is a file name in traditional Chinese. Files I got from classroom came from English XP versions where Chinese non-unicode interface is set as default. Before, since I couldn't see their name under Win98SE, I renamed them with NJStar or the usual Office Word 2000. that way I could handle them that easy (Acrobat was able to open À©Õ¹.pdf).

Now, under XP I don't need NJStar to identify those files from school, but you know what happens. Of course, I still could rename them the old way (to (Big5) format), installing the newest NJStar version in XP in order to understand what À©Õ¹ stands for. That’s why I blamed MS: for not doing what NJStar did. But, sure, you're right, that's because XP got to be multilingual with Unicode.

I ran the Acrobat 7.0 and it has still the same problem. Looked in their forum and everybody using japanese or chinese file & folder names is complaining. The only solution they propose is to install the Asiatic versions of Acrobat. I can hard believe it... but that's their point of view.

Concerning other pdf readers, I tested the one from Foxit, but the result was the same. I keep on trying.

@Scuzzman: CutePdf works much quicker than Acrobat Distiller used wo/ Reader.