CHM buttons are not localized in a French project (shows English Contents, Index, Search, Print, Hide buttons)

[ginafromtampa]

I opened an old WinHelp project into my new RoboHelp 7. When I generate the CHM, even with the Project Settings in RoboHelp set to French and running in a French Windows operating system (MS Windows XP Pro 2002 SP 2), the CHM output is still in English. The buttons display in English (Contents, Index, Search, Print, Hide buttons). The title bar of the CHM also says "HTML Help" even though the project title in the Project Settings is "Aide en ligne...".

My Windows Regional Settings through the Control Panel - Regional Options tab is set French (France). On the Languages tab I under Text Services and Input Languages, Details button, I selected French (France) French. On the Advanced tab I selected French. Then I rebooted.

On the language bar on my Task pane, I selected FR. The CHM still displays in English.

Please help! I have to produce 4 CHMS in languages other than English today.

Thanks!

[ginafromtampa]

I also just created a brand new HTML project with Project Settings set to French, generated a chm, and the buttons are all still in English, even though I've changed my regional settings to French.

[ginafromtampa]

Also got this weird warning in the Output view for the chm:

Warning: The size of stop file has to be limited in 512 bytes.

I deleted all the entries in the Stop file and regenerated. Still the buttons are only in English in the chm.

[Peter Grainge]

I don't know the procedure here but I am trying to find out. However, I am sorry but it will not be today.

[Pete_Lees]

Gina,

How do the other .chm files on your machine appear? If one of your .chm files shows the wrong button labels then I'd expect them all to do so. This is because, when you open a .chm file, the HTML Help engine simply checks the current locale and then loads the appropriate language resources from a DLL in the folder %windir%\system32\mui. In other words, none of the settings you've chosen for your help project should affect the button labels in the resulting .chm file.

There's some more information on this here:

http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/hh_info.htm#HHUPD13

With regard to 'HTML Help' appearing in the title bar rather than your specified title text, this is caused by a mismatch between the primary language of the help file and that of the operating system. See:

http://helpware.net/FAR/far_faq.htm#WindowTitle

So if the language of your help file precisely matches that of the machine on which you're opening it, the correct title bar text should appear. Some authors try to build a bit of latitude into this by setting the language of their help files to US English — unfortunately, as I understand it, not something that you can do from within RoboHelp. Instead, you must open the project (.hhp) file in Notepad or HTML Help Workshop and then, in the OPTIONS section, add or modify the Language= line so that it looks like this:

Language=0x409 English (United States)

Because the function of this line is simply to determine the order in which index keywords and search results are sorted, you shouldn't notice any bad effects in your non-English help files.

Pete

[ginafromtampa]

In the Help topic for the language file in the Baggage folder RoboHHRE.lng: "Customize text for localization", it has the following notes. No matter which language file I edit (even the English one and now I'm back to running my Windows operating system in English), the outputs don't show my edits to the language file, such as for the Contents button in the chm. I don't know what it means by "If RoboHHRE.LNG is already in your user's Windows directory". How would it get to the user's Windows directory? Are you supposed to include the language file somehow with your chm output like you used to have to do with .cnt files? Can't understand why the edits to the language files aren't working. Also, I tried to insert "Language=0x409 English (United States)" in the .hhp file, but nothing changed in the chm. The only reference is to a language file in the .hhp file is under [FILES] RoboHHRE.lng. I tried removing the language file, or just adding "Language=0x409 English (United States)", but no change.
By the way, when I select Spanish (Spain) in Project settings, I get some other language in the language file:
[Common]
Contents=Sisukord
Index=Register
Search=Otsing
Glossary==Sõnastik

Notes:

If RoboHHRE.LNG is already in your user's Windows directory, it overrides the file in your Baggage Files folder.

If you do not include the RoboHHRE.LNG file, or omit some values, your project defaults to the English values shown in the previous example.

[Pete_Lees]

Gina,

You should forget about the LNG file, which isn't used in HTML Help at all; it's entirely a browser-based help thing (WebHelp, etc.).

What I was trying to say is that, as the help author, you don't have any control over the language of the button labels in your .chm files. This is managed by Windows, as you should be able to confirm by looking at any other .chm file on your machine. The fact that you're seeing English text labels where you would expect to see French suggests that there's something slightly askew in your installation of Windows. Perhaps you don't have the French language resource DLL for the HTML Help viewer — %windir%\system32\040C\hhctrlui.dll, I believe — so the help engine is defaulting to English. On French machines where everything is present and correct, the buttons will be appropriately labelled.

Edit: Just to add that the Language= line belongs in the OPTIONS section of the .hhp file, not the FILES section.

Pete

[ginafromtampa]

Pete,

Thanks very much for the explanation. I was able to get on the list for our QA dept. to try to open the chm file on a French operating system. I'll post the outcome. Someone should include in RoboHelp's help file what you just explained....Thanks!

Gina

[EileenPalsson]

quote:

---

Originally posted by: Pete Lees
...
Instead, you must open the project (.hhp) file in Notepad or HTML Help Workshop and then, in the OPTIONS section, add or modify the Language= line so that it looks like this:

Language=0x409 English (United States)

Because the function of this line is simply to determine the order in which index keywords and search results are sorted, you shouldn't notice any bad effects in your non-English help files.

---

Pete, different languages have different alphabetical order! So you don't want the English sort order in a German or Swedish help file, for example! Users would often not find what they are looking for.

/Eileen

[EileenPalsson]

GinaL, would you be able to give us an update? Did the CHM files look ok on a PC with a true French OS installed?

To avoid having to rewrite everything, I've written the following info/instructions for my team -- though I'm not yet sure they're 100% correct:

---------------------------------------------

After I reported this issue to Adobe, they worked on the problem for several days. They even sent me a new HtmSingleSourceHtmlHelp.dll file that was supposed to solve the problem. But it didn't work correctly. No matter what contortions we put ourselves through, we couldn't get both of these items correct in the CHM file at the same time, namely:

• Index compiled in correct alphabetical order accdg to the language of the help project.
  
  
• Correctly translated help title showing in the caption, regardless of the user's Windows regional settings. (For example, we wanted "FORMS-Hilfe zu FORMS 5-3" to appear as the caption of the German version of FORMS help, even if our regional settings were set to English.)
  
  I think we'd all agree that the index has to be in alphabetical order. So from what I've seen, this is what we have to do when compiling a non-English version of help using RH7:
  
  1. Set up the project with the foreign name.
  
  2. Set the language in the project settings. And in the Project Settings dialog, click Advanced and check out the LNG File tab to make sure it's using a translated version.
  
  3. Ensure that the Window Caption setting is correct in each window included in the project. (On RoboHelp's Project tab, open the Windows folder, double-click each window in turn, and check the settings.)
  
  4. Set the Language setting in the HHP file to Language=[hex value for that language]. I found a bunch of them listed on this web page. Someone else might be able to find a better source:
  
  https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/scoop/es_scoop_60/library/i18n/locale/nls/i18n_nls_lcid_tools.e
  
  5. Change your Windows regional settings to the same language as the help project. (Reboot if prompted.)
  
  6. Recommended, for safety's sake: Delete the CPD file.
  
  7. Open the project and compile using RH7.
  
  8. Check the index's sort order -- is it in alphabetical order according to the language of the project?
  
  9. Check the help caption -- make sure it's not "HTML Help".
  
  Note: Any customized buttons in your CHM should appear correctly translated, but other buttons (Contents, Index, Search) still appear in English -- at least they do on my PC, even though I did step 2 above. We need to check whether those buttons appear correctly when the PC is actually running a true foreign version of Windows, and not just with temporarily adjusted Windows settings. OR -- is anyone else able to get these to appear translated in the CHM file?
  
  --------------------------------------
  
  Does anyone have anything to add? Other solutions? Easier procedures? Better results to report?
  
  Thank you
  Eileen
  

[ginafromtampa]

Sorry but I don't have an update for this. I rarely have to make any changes to the chms since we're using FlashHelp for everything but the one legacy RoboHelp project. None of our international customers have complained, so hopefully it's no longer an issue.

[Mary_N]

Hi!

Eileen - thanks for those well-documented steps. Unfortunately, I was unable to get my buttons to appear in the localized language either. Has anyone had any luck with this issue? Do the buttons appear localized on an operating system set up in the correct language? Thanks!

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, Mary,

> Do the buttons appear localized on an operating system set up in the correct language?

They do, yes, when viewed on a fully localised version of the operating system. On the other hand, I believe that just switching (say) an English Windows computer to the target language may not install the additional HTML Help resource DLL that is required by that language — and consequently the button and tab labels in the help window will continue to be in English. This appears to be the issue that is described in the following thread in the Madcap Flare forum:

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7483

This isn't something that a help author can influence one way or the other by customizing the project or window settings in an individual help file. The language in which the button and tab labels in the help window are displayed is determined at run time (not compile time) by hh.exe, the HTML Help executable. Therefore, every help file on an individual computer will have labels in the same language, regardless of how they were configured and compiled.

Pete