Unicode support for file names?

[wolbrink]

I've just finished a tech support session with a user from Thailand who was getting a "Unable to copy installation data to local folders" error. It turns out I had a file with an accented character in it. Using Sysinternals ProcessMon I noticed that my setup was looking for a file with a "?" character in it.

As a workaround we changed the "Language for non-Unicode"programs from "Thai" to "English (United States)" and installed the program. Then we changed it back.

I'll rename the file I'm installing so it doesn't have an accented character in it.

Is there any chance a future version of InstallAware will support Unicode (with help from Delphi 2009 perhaps)?

Thanks,
Troy

[MichaelNesmith]

Keep in mind that for MSI authoring, it is recommended to not use accented file names - by Microsoft:

http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/20 ... pages.aspx

It is recommended to use only ASCII characters and then you can author a database with a neutral code page (0). Such a database could be used by any language.

Unofficially, MSI databases do support UTF-7 and UTF-8 by specifying code pages 65000 and 65001, respectively.

Since Microsoft officially does not have unicode support for files referenced in MSI files themselves, InstallAware itself will be limited by lack of native support from Microsoft on this front.

However, if you can send us a VM along with a minimum setup project that reproduces this issue, we'll be able to take a detailed look at it and provide a fix or workaround.