Explaining the Windows 2000 Regional Options Dialog

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2004/12/11 12:48 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2004/12/11/279997.aspx

(This page was originally posted at http://i18nWithVB.com/win2k.htm but I thought it could use a wider audience)

Explaining the Windows 2000 Regional Options Dialog

Disclaimer: This page is not officially sanctioned by Microsoft. With that said, several Microsoft employees admitted to getting a good laugh out of it, and no one found it to be technically inaccurate. It is perhaps a bit ruder than they would choose, thats all! :-)

Now, I would have thought that this dialog would have been easy for people to understand, but there has been a lot of confusion related to it. Therefore, this rude little Q&A is intended to cover just what this dialog does for you. As I describe each part, refer to this picture so you know exactly what I am talking about.

I will let you in on a secret: the people who understand this dialog will sometimes laugh their you-know-whats off every time they think about the people who just do not get it. Not the people who ask questions and then learn, but the people who ask questions, get answers, and then start confusing simple terms like BUTTON, DROPDOWN, and LISTBOX. So please, we want YOU to be one of us, the laughers, rather than the laughees.

You should assume that every word of this page is there to allow you to laugh at all the others who simply refuse to get it. If there happens to be a sentence that used to apply to you, just don't tell anyone; we will never know the difference. Now you can laugh with the rest of us -- welcome to the club!

First, the control types:

• This is a button.
  

  
  You press it, and then things happen. If it has three dots at the end of it, usually that means another dialog is doing to open when you press it.
  
  
  
  

• This is a dropdown.
  
  
  
  If you click the little arrow on the right side, you will see a list of items. The selected item appears even when list is not dropped down. This particular type of control lets you pick at most ONE item.
  
  
  
  
• This is a listbox.
  
  
  
  You will notice that this type of listbox has a bunch of checkboxes, one next to each item. This style of control lets you pick as many items as you want to, and it lets you easily see what is selected.

Ok, now to the dialog!

Here is each part, explained:

• Default User Locale (DROPDOWN) - These are the preference that you, the user, has for items like date formats, calendar, preferences for text sorting, etc. Now most of these settings can be handled individually by clicking on many of the tabs at the top of the dialog (Numbers, Currency, Time, Date). You can think of this dropdown combobox as a useful way to be lazy and have settings made automatically based on the locale you choose. And don't forget -- its the DROPDOWN at the top of the dialog!

• Default System Locale (BUTTON) - This setting is the one that controls, at the machine level, the locale that will be used for all conversions to and from Unicode for applications without Unicode support (like VB, for example). After you hit the BUTTON another dialog will appear. If you change the Default System Locale, you will be prompted to reboot afterwards (you may be prompted for your Windows 2000 CD first if you need to install some files). But I cannot stress it strongly enough: this is the BUTTON at the lower left hand corner of the dialog: the one that says "Set default..." You would not believe how many people mess this up! So think carefully and allow yourself to be one of the people laughing about the confusion, rather than one of the people being laughed at.

  Incidentally, it also controls the font "language" that is used for the case of [primarily] East Asian fonts that have more than one name, based on language.

• User Interface Language (DROPDOWN) - You may not have this control on your regional options at all; it is only there if you have MUI (the Multilingual User Interface) installed. This allows you to change the actual language of Windows itself. It has no effect, I repeat no effect, on your installation of Windows otherwise. At all. Period. If you think it will, then cure yourself of this delusion and realize that you do not need MUI to have a multilingual experience on Windows 2000!

• Languages Your System Supports (CHECKED LISTBOX) -- This LISTBOX of languages, each of which has a CHECKBOX to the left, is what controls the installation of all the code pages, fonts, keyboards, etc. so that applications can support the particular language. You will notice that the list has several items that cover many languages; this is intentional! After all, many languages share all of the same information, and thus you can choose the one item and be done with it. You will probably be prompted for your Windows 2000 CD to install the files that you are in essence requesting.

Now, there is obviously more: there is that daunting "Advanced..." BUTTON in the lower right hand corner of the dialog. Lets just ignore that one for now, it is for advanced installation of various alternate legacy code pages (many of which are installed automatically when you add languages that your system supports).

There is also the last TAB of the dialog, which supports input locales. But that is one that will probably requires its own page to explain, so that will be a job for another day.

That's all for now. Let me know if you have any questions or comments about this page!

# Creative Teens' Club on 6 Jul 2008 12:19 PM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 6 Jul 2008 1:44 PM:

referenced by

go to newer or older post, or back to index or month or day