Is your Gadget not working? The characters behind it may be too much of a distraction....

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/01/11 10:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/01/11/6999603.aspx


From the recently pre-recorded blogs collection...

And no, this is not a post about ED or the drugs used for it, the way all 'Gadget' posts seem to be!

Over in the microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization newsgroup, Norman Diamond mentions:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930135
> Windows Vista では、ファイル名に国際的な文字が含まれている
> ガジェットをインストールできません。たとえば、ファイル名に日本語
> または中国語の文字が含まれているガジェットをインストールできません。

Microsoft says in Japanese that if a filename contains Japanese characters
then the gadget can't be installed.

It's fine with me if Microsoft doesn't want its Japanese products to work.
The problem is that refunds are overdue.

I love the way he writes. :-)

Yet another Gadget problem, though not caused by the same problem as this other one I blogged about previously.

In this case, the problem discussed in KB 930135 (You cannot install a gadget if the gadget has international characters in the file name in Windows Vista) is at first suggestive of not being a problem with Gadget code but a lack of Unicode file name support in .CAB files. From the article:

Symptoms:
In Windows Vista, you cannot install a gadget if the gadget has international characters in the file name. For example, you cannot install a gadget that has Japanese or Chinese characters in the file name.

Cause:
This problem occurs because Windows Vista cannot extract files from some cabinet (.cab) files that contain non-ANSI characters in the file name.

But honestly, this seems like a less than full explanation -- the fact that it says some files suggests that it is not true of all files containing characters off the default system code page. Which would instead suggest that some of the components dealing with the file names don't support Unicode.

This is definitely one of those issues that need to be fixed in the next version if not sooner, in any case. Not supporting Unicode at this point just smacks of irresponibility....

Also, Norman's words suggest some perhaps bad translation in the KB article itself, something else to be looked into.

 

This post brlought to you by(U+0c38, aka TELUGU LETTER SA)


Matt Reppert on 11 Jan 2008 8:59 PM:

I dunno, the text seems fine to me.

The English version:

In Windows Vista, you cannot install a gadget if the gadget has international characters in the file name. For example, you cannot install a gadget that has Japanese or Chinese characters in the file name.

The Japanese version:

> Windows Vista では、ファイル名に国際的な文字が含まれている

> ガジェットをインストールできません。たとえば、ファイル名に日本語

> または中国語の文字が含まれているガジェットをインストールできません。

A literal translation of the Japanese version:

In Windows Vista, you cannot install a gadget with international characters in the filename.  For example, you can't install a gadget that has Japanese or Chinese characters in the filename.

The only thing that strikes me odd is the use of "international" characters in Japanese, but maybe that makes sense to a native reader, I have no clue.  I have basically no useful technical Japanese, even at an elementary level.

They use the same examples in all languages, though.  Hey, if you pick any non-Latin script as an example, you're going to end up telling someone in their own language that their language doesn't work at some point, so I don't see the big deal.  Interestingly, English, Japanese, and Korean appear to be the only languages that don't contain a "The text of this advisory was created via machine translation" warning.

Michael S. Kaplan on 11 Jan 2008 9:02 PM:

But even better is when components use Unicode and people are never told their choices are invalid....

Given that most of Unicode is not in any ACP, this seems critical for quite a few people in the world!


Please consider a donation to keep this archive running, maintained and free of advertising.
Donate €20 or more to receive an offline copy of the whole archive including all images.

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