by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/02/20 10:46 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/02/20/7819354.aspx
Over in the Suggestion Box, regular reader Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven asked:
Michael,
any idea why MSDN offers all language packs for Office 2007, yet does not offer the multi-language one? Doing testing on this front makes installing a bit tedious (especially since you cannot just launch the MSIs from the different proofing directories --for installing the newer IMEs-- since it will give you a "Error 1713. Setup cannot install one of the required products for Microsoft IME (...)"). Thankfully I managed to find out about the LAUNCHEDBYSETUPEXE=1 trick to pass to the MSI on the command line, but it sure is annoying.
Of course I can't really speak for anyone on the Office side of the business, but I know from listening to people talk about the (not entirely dissimilar) Windows language pack that what has driven these particular SKUs.
It really wasn't the MSDN style environment, which is not really at all what they are about.
They are about a particular interesting deployment scenario -- OEMs who want to build multiple languages into a single image in order to deploy languages that are expected to be used together, to people who pay the extra money to get that kind of a SKU....
And clearly they aren't slicing up the pieces the way you are related to the IMEs, right? I suspect over time those workarounds will stop working since they wanted those this to not fail.
If you look at white papers like Customize a multilanguage deployment of the 2007 Office system and others under the Deploying 2007 Internationally node, it is pretty clear who their targets are (by looking at who they made it easiest for by giving them useful instructions!).
Of course the people who are building such images can always test the ones they create, but making it easier for everyone else to do so doesn't necessarily seem like a scenario they are going out of their way to make easier. Kind of like they aren't against it but they aren't jumping all over making it easy to do.
Now again I have no idea if this is what either Windows or Office has in mind here, and I don't get invited to those kinds of meetings. But from a priorities standpoint it is what things look like to me.
So, to properly "sell" the importance of the scenario, you probably have to explain why it is important to you, and then if that is compelling then perhaps it will become easier....
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