Multiple Languages in RH7

[brenwine]

I've been tasked with evaluating RH7 for it's multilingual capabilities (not because I know multiple languages but because I know RoboHelp). I'm having trouble getting Japanese characters to appear in the WYSIWYG editor and in other places in RoboHelp. The characters are appearing fine in the output. I saw in this forum that to see translations in the Help Viewer (.chm output), I'd have to have the Japanese version of Windows installed. But I'm able to see the translations in the content. I can also see the translated tab labels etc in the Web Help output. Within the project itself, however, all Japanese characters appear as open squares. The RoboHelp Help has a topic that describes viewing topics in multiple languages side-by-side. Because it shows English and Japanese side-by-side, it suggests that this is somehow possible. Is there something extra that I need to install? I've head of "language packs" for Windows and thought that might be what I'm missing, but I wanted to post my question before starting to install things at random.

[Peter Grainge]

Hi Brenda

Take a look at the Using RH7 topic on my site. What you ask about is covered there.

[brenwine]

Peter, I reviewed the topic on your site but was unable to find an answer to my question. It may be there, and I'm just having trouble finding it because I'm new to this. What I found on my own, however, is that it appears that the problem with the WYSIWYG is font related--I was using a font that did not support Unicode characters. Changing the font corrected this problem, and now I can see Japanese characters in the WYSIWYG editor.

I still cannot see Japanese characters in the TOC (e.g., in book titles) and on the "Advanced Settings for Localization" dialog box, where I can translate the defaults for the output. In these places, Japanese characters still appear as open squares. Does this mean that RoboHelp is using a font that is not Unicode-compliant? If so, is there a way to change this?

Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

I am taking advice on this one? The output is working because whatever font you have used for the skin is obviously unicode compliant. I am not at my RH7 machine though so asking someone else. Because of timezones, I don't think you will get an answer today. Sorry.

[brenwine]

So it looks like RH7 requires the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) pack for any language that you want to view in RoboHelp. I installed the MUI pack for Japanese, and now I can see Japanese characters in RoboHelp. It's pretty cool actually. I don't know all the specifics, but I think there's a different MUI pack for every language. I asked the guys in our IT department, and they gave me what I needed for Japanese. I'm using Windows XP.

[Peter Grainge]

I'm a bit confused now as I thought you had tried that, found it OK for the topics but not the TOC. I take it all is well now in the TOC when you are editing as well as in the output, correct?

Unicode, as I understand it, means the font complies with the unicode characters for a language. It doesn't necessarily mean it has every character for every language. So yes you may need another unicode font for another language.

What RH7 can do is display any unicode character from any fontset you throw at it.

I stand to be corrected by those with more knowledge of unicode but hope that is close enough,

[---Dirk_Bock]

Please note that I didn't have the opportunity to run RH7 yet, but the TOC - and index - problems are old ones.

Apparently the help viewer uses the OS settings for determining the default fonts for TOC and index. One may define separate fonts for those two panes, but leaving these definitions out does not generate a compile error; only those pesky squares.

Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop and FAR offer the opportunity to set the desired fonts for TOC and index, while RoboHelp didn't do so until version 6. As RH 7 supports asian languages, there should be a filed in some dialog box for setting the font.

To check the situation you can open the hhc or hhk with Notepad and have a look at the first lines. If there is no font definition to be seen, the correct settings are missing.

Here's hoping to find some time to deal with RH7 soon!

---Dirk Bock

[Peter Grainge]

Brenda

Can you please confirm that the language pack installation did fix the problem both in topics and in the TOC within RoboHelp?

[brenwine]

Yes, installing the Japanese language pack fixed the display problem both in the topics and in the TOC, index, etc.

What's interesting is that after I installed the langauge pack, fonts that previously did not display Japanese characters now do. For example, we were using Tahoma font in our topics. Before I applied the Japanese language pack, all the Tahoma font displayed as squares. I changed the font to Arial Unicode MS, and then the Japanese characters displayed correctly in the topics. This is what made me think that if I could control the font used in RoboHelp that I could change the font there and fix the problem. However, since I didn't know how to do that, I went ahead and installed the Japanese language pack and voila, RoboHelp displayed the Japanese characters correctly. THEN, after applying the language pack, I changed the font in my topics back to Tahoma, and Japanese characters are displaying correctly in that font too. This is a great discovery since before I thought that we might have to develop a "Unicode" style sheet for our translators. But it looks like that won't be necessary.

-Brenda