Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit 2003
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 338
Pages: 338
Organizations that support multilingual desktops face unique support issues. Typical problems include characters or fonts that do not display properly, applications that use the wrong currencies or sorting orders, and compatibility problems with line-of-business and third party applications and drivers. This section summarizes how to solve the most common problems that your Help desk might encounter following a multilingual deployment of Windows XP Professional.
The updated Multilingual Document Consultant in Windows XP Professional Help and Support Center is your first resource for diagnosing and resolving most common problems involving inputting or viewing documents written in multiple languages.
To start the Multilingual Document Consultant
In Help and Support Center, in the Search box, type Multilingual Document Consultant.
In the Search Results list, click Multilingual Document Consultant.
The following are possible solutions for some of the most common problems that users might encounter when inputting or viewing characters from multiple languages.
If you know that the languages displayed incorrectly are part of the Complex Script and Right-to-Left Collection or the East Asian Language Collection, support for those languages probably has not been installed. Only a user logged on as an Administrator can install this support. Users might require the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system CD or access to a network resource to complete this procedure.
To install the Complex Script and Right-to-Left Collection or East Asian Language Collection
In Control Panel, click Regional and Language Options.
Click the Languages tab, and then under Supplemental language support, select the check boxes for the language collections that you want to install.
If you install both the Complex Script and Right-to-Left Language Collection and the East Asian Language Collection, but the document still does not display those characters correctly, verify that the font being displayed supports multiple character sets. If it does not, change the font to Tahoma or Microsoft Sans Serif.
Some applications might not support multiple languages, or the application might have been developed using a different language version of Windows XP Professional. Try entering characters using another program, such as WordPad, that you know contains multilingual support.
If you know that the application was developed under another language version operating system, or if you are using a 16-bit DOS character-based program, close the application, change the default input language as appropriate, and then restart the application.
To change the default input language
In Control Panel, click Regional and Language Options.
Click the Languages tab, and then under Text services and input languages, click Details.
Under Default input language, click the input language that you want to use.
If you suspect that the application was not developed using Unicode, you might need to change the language for non-Unicode programs.
To change the language for non-Unicode programs
In Control Panel, click Regional and Language Options.
Click the Advanced tab, and then under Language for non-Unicode programs, select the language for which the application was developed.
Finally, if none of the above solutions solve the problem, verify that the font being displayed supports multiple character sets. If it does not, change the font to Tahoma or Microsoft Sans Serif.
The default input language on the computer might require that you use a TrueType font, such as Tahoma, when typing at the command prompt. If you change to a TrueType font and continue to experience problems, check the mapping of your keyboard layout. Some keyboard layouts have MS DOS keyboard mapping that differs from the normal mapping of characters.
To select a TrueType font to use at the command prompt
Open a command prompt window, and then on the System Menu, click Properties.
Click the Font tab, and then in the Font box, click a TrueType font, such as Lucida Console.
In the Apply Properties to Shortcut dialog box, do one of the following:
To use the TrueType font for this session only, click Apply properties to current window only.
To use the TrueType font as the default for all command prompt windows, click Modify shortcut that started this window.
Verify that you are using the correct standards and formats settings for your locale, or customize the settings to your preferences.
To change number, currency, time, date, and sort-order settings
In Control Panel, click Regional and Language Options.
Click the Regional Options tab, and then under Standards and Formats, click the country/region whose standards and formats you want to use. If you want to customize individual settings, such as how dates are displayed or numbers are sorted, click Customize, and then click the appropriate tabs and options.
If you have a language or regional problem with an application, the language emulation capabilities of Windows XP Professional make it easy for your IT department to verify and test an application s multilingual compatibility issues. You can test an application developed on any other language version of Windows by setting the test computer s language for non-Unicode programs to that of the application.
When testing for application compatibility, be sure to do the following:
Anywhere that an application accepts user input, verify that any mixture of scripts works and that automated test cases are passing in randomly generated Unicode strings, not just as characters from the ANSI character set.
For the Windows XP Professional MUI Pack, change the user interface language for one user and run an application. Check to see whether the user interface language of the application changes to match the new setting.
Some common problems you might encounter with applications include:
Square boxes or dots displayed instead of characters. This indicates that the default font does not contain glyphs for the characters being displayed. The solution is to change the font to the appropriate language.
Question marks displayed instead of characters. This indicates that a conversion from Unicode to ANSI was for a Unicode character that does not exist in the ANSI code page. The question mark is the default character returned instead. The solution is to change the language for non-Unicode programs to the native language.
Formats and sorting orders are incorrect for the locale. This indicates that the default standards and formats settings for currency and date formats and for sorting orders might not be set to the correct language.
For more information about resolving these problems, see Problems Inputting or Displaying Multiple Languages earlier in this chapter.