InstallAware

I am building an installer for a Japanese corporation. The previous installer I released was built using InstallAware 9, and they were happy. I have just rebuilt the installer making no changes other than to the files it installs, and updating to InstallAware 10.

The customer has reported (and sent me screenshots) that the installer displays incorrect text when run on a native Japanese system.

For instance the dialog

InstallAware Wizard
The InstallAware Wizard is verifying the contents of the setup package. This may take a moment.
(Cancel)

displays as

InstallAware ?E?B?U?[?h
InstallAware
?E?B?U?[?h....
(?L???"?Z??(C))

Any ideas please? Unfortunately this one is fairly urgent for us to resolve.
I would add that this is an English installer running on a Japanese OS; it has not been localised; the messages should appear in English.

I have just remembered that last time I used this project I did an experiment with Japanese localisations so I expect it may be due to that.
I have renamed the existing translations.Japanese files I was working on and checked that the default language in the project is set to English (it already was).
After rebuilding the project, the messages are still scrambled when running on a Japanese OS.
As further evidence that I don't have a Japanese translation available, 'Display Language Selector' is not displayed in the Project Options dialog.

Also I have just tried another completely different I built, where I had not experimented with translation. This behaves in the same way: some scrambled messages.

Dear NickDay,

Can you give me some more information about the target system? Windows version?

Hi Aviv,
It's Windows 7 Ultimate x86 Japanese.
We tried in a UK version of Win7, just set to Japanese, and the problem did not occur, so it apparently needs to be a native Japanese system to reveal the problem.
If you wish to provide 'any old' installer for us to try and see if that also displays the problem, that would be possible (nick@vgieurope.com).
Nick

Hi Aviv,
Wondering whether you have any ideas yet, please.
Nick

Hey Nick,

I am actually trying to get a hold of a Japanese version of Windows 7 Ultimate so I can get to the root of the issue.

Have you tested this on more than one Japanese machines?

Hi Aviv,
Many thanks.
Yes, we've effectively tested on more than one, as the customer in Japan reported the problem on his PC, and then we reproduced it in our UK office, using the system spec I sent you. I could find out the spec of the PC in Japan if you wish.
Regards,
Nick

Update: At Aviv's request I installed IA11 on a clean PC and the problem did not occur, so it looks like this happens only in IA10, not 9 or 11.

The same issue has been reported by one of our customers.
They have a Windows XP Japanese operating system, and get the same text as NickDay. We are using InstallAware 10.
Would be great to hear if this was a known issue in Installaware 10, so we can decide whether to change to version 9 or 11.

Thanks

Dear User,

I Will check it.

Regards

I am seeing this issue on InstallAware 2012 with a Japanese Windows 2003 system.

The provided translations.Japanese file opens and is translated when using Translation Manager Pro.
If I open it in Firefox on auto detect it displays Japanese characters without issue; however InstallAware just displays garbled text within our dialogs.

Some of the text does show up correctly though?

Chris

Dear Chris,

can you post a sample project that I can test?

Regards

The problem was due to the fact the dialogs don't automatically use the default system character set, but are FORCED to use a specified character set.

Shouldn't IA detect what OS locale the installer is run against and handle character sets dynamically?

One thing I noticed is that the drop down list will populate for languages that are definitely not supported on a given system.

InstallAnywhere wouldn't show the user Japanese if the OS configured didn't have Japanese support...

Chris

Dear Chris,

I have realized a sample project that uses 3 different localizations.
By default it uses English, then optional you can choose Russian or Chinese.

The project just comes with the Welcome dialog but it shows how dialogs can be dynamically called.

Please note, some MessageBoxes (as when cancel installation is selected) comes from Windows API MessageBox and is therefore out of the control of InstallAware. To fix that it may be necessary to change the default system language for non-unicode programs in Windows language settings if the system font is not showing correctly.

Regards

Thanks Francesco,

Doesn't having to create Dialogs for each character set that share common strings defeat the purpose of localization?

The ideal solution would be to have a single set of dialogs where the character set used depends on the default OS char set...

InstallAnywhere for example, wouldn't show the Chinese option on an English version of Windows if the locale settings weren't enabled within the OS.

My point is, why localize and share DUPLICATE strings among 3-4 sets of panels?

This becomes a nightmare if you have to make updates to a panel... Due to IA limitations now you have to update 3-4...

Chris