by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/04/28 07:51 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/04/28/2311321.aspx
Björn pointed out a new take on the system locale (a.k.a. the Language for non-Unicode Programs) in Vista, from the help:
Now compared to the confusion people hit in Windows 2000 and even in Windows XP/Server 2003, it seems nice to see the area covered in help.
But notice how the most important points conventionally associated with this setting (the default system code page, the GDI font linking chain, and other font behavior) is not even mentioned?
Now as a rule, any time you have a non-Unicode application, its user interface language will end up matching the default system locale because if it doesn't, the user interface will show all question marks.
But obviously there a lot of languages covered by the same code page in many cases, so while it is important to point out this link due to the potential bad application behavior if you try to work outside of that code page, making this side effect the only topic of the article seems a bit like overkill, doesn't it?
For completeness we can click on that display language link at the bottom of the page:
So anyway it seems pretty clear that the help is different written from an MUI or user interface language point of view, doesn't it? The actual core effects that the default system locale has are not even really mentioned!
Though to be honest this is a case where decisions are made by those who show up. And although I and the rest of the NLS team did a lot of review of various documentation topics, the review was really on the Platform SDK topics related to the NLS API. So if the MUI folks do a review and mention their principal concerns and the NLS people don't, then what can we expect the documentation's focus to be?
Anyway, I expect this will get better in the next version so I'm not too worried. Even this counts as progress! :-)
This post brought to you by ໃ (U+0ec3, a.k.a. LAO VOWEL SIGN AY -- where Laos means Canada?)
# kevin on 4 Jun 2007 7:48 AM:
Is ther anyway for me to remove the system language. Currently i`m using english.But some programs such as Nvidia Control Panel displays suing my System Language which not english.This would be a big help
# Michael S. Kaplan on 4 Jun 2007 8:21 AM:
?????
You cannot remove the system language. Can you describe more about your config and what you are trying to do? It might be clearer how to help if I understood what is going on....
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