Launching the keyboard layouts dialog directly?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/06/05 23:43 -07:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2007/06/05/3111075.aspx


So the other day I was asked how launch the Text Services and Input Languages dialog directly. You know, this dialog:

This is from XP; the one in Vista is a little different.

Now usually people click on the button in the middle tab in Regional Options. But in this case she was looking at steps:

  1. Open the Control Panel
  2. Launch Regional and Language Options
  3. Switch to the "Languages" tab in XP/Server 2003 (the "Keyboards and Languages" tab in Vista)
  4. Click on the "Details..." button in XP/Server 2003 (the "Change Keyboards..." tab in Vista)

And they really wanted something less involved -- an easier way to open the dialog.

She was feeling like the only option might be to create independent UI to do it all....

But to be honest, there is a much easier way. :-)

Remember how you can launch Regional and Language Options by running

    control.exe intl.cpl

like I said in How to REALLY handle the unattended version of Regional and Language Options?

Well, you can just run

    control.exe input.dll

to launch that Text Services and Input Languages dialog directly!

Of course, intl.cpl launches the dialog by using rundll32.dll, just what that post above suggests that you don't need to do.

Pobody's nerfect though. And both methods will work for XP and later.... :-)

 

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# oidon on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 3:56 AM:

> And both methods will work for XP and later....

FYI: The first method (control.exe intl.cpl) will also work on Windows 2000. The second (control.exe input.dll) unfortunately does not, though.

# Michael S. Kaplan on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 4:08 AM:

Well, that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? The Win2000 dialog for adding keyboard layouts is on the last tab in intl.cpl -- it is not a seprate applet as it is for XP and later....

# oidon on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 4:30 AM:

It is not so intuitive to me. When you click on that last tab in intl.cpl and then click on the Edit (or whatever it is in English) button, it brings up a new window (separate applet?) identical to the one in XP minus the Advanced tab.

# Michael S. Kaplan on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 9:27 AM:

Yes, true -- but it was a dialog in a different binary called a different way. The move of things to input.dll di not happen until XP....

# Mihai on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 12:32 PM:

You can also do

  control.exe intl.cpl,,0

  control.exe intl.cpl,,1

  control.exe intl.cpl,,2

to open with a certain tab selected (and this works for other control panel applets too)

# Michael S. Kaplan on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 8:29 PM:

I had somebody ask me after they read Launching the keyboard layouts dialog directly? how I knew about


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referenced by

2007/06/12 Not exactly reverse engineering....

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