from Osaka in Japan

[FUKUDA Takahisa]

Hello Everybody.
It reports from Osaka in Japan.

i'm very fond of KoolMoves.
i'm teaching the children the personal computer in the elementary school.
Last year, i used KoolMoves as the teaching materials for the first time. It was popular much.

By the way, there is my request.
It is that KoolMoves becomes able to handle the character of 2 bytes code.
It is only 1 byte that, now, can make Text Effects.
The menu and the helps of KoolMoves are English.
It can be conquered by my efforts.
However, Text Effects can be conquered by nothing.
It is very glad when granting my request.
See you.

[Bob Hartzell]

I understand your problem. Part of my hestitation aside from lack of time to implement two byte character languages is the problem with supporting users who speak those languages.

I will try to get to it in a few months. Hopefully I can call on you to test it for me.

You are probably the first contributor to the forum from Japan.


[Edited by Bob Hartzell on 01-04-2002 at 08:23 AM]

[johnie]

I don't know how well this will help but the Help files are All HTML. They could be put online and then Alis could be used to go from English to Japanese with the help files. Alis Gist technology doesn't always do a perfect translation but it might help get the basic Idea down. That sounds like a good afternoon project for me I'll see what I can do.

[FUKUDA Takahisa]

Dear Bob and johnie.

I'm glad to hear your good plan.
Probably, a lot of people who to use the Kanji, too.
A Kanji that is two byte character has one meaning respectively.
Therefore, there are many impacts in Text Effect which was made with Kanji.
Probably, it will be interesting for the people who not usually the Kanji.
Translate the help file into correct Japanese. Support the users in Japan. If they are business, will not be difficult.

Thank you.

[tamichan]

Originally posted by Bob Hartzell
I understand your problem. Part of my hestitation aside from lack of time to implement two byte character languages is the problem with supporting users who speak those languages.

I will try to get to it in a few months. Hopefully I can call on you to test it for me.

You are probably the first contributor to the forum from Japan.


[Edited by Bob Hartzell on 01-04-2002 at 08:23 AM]

I also want to be a beta tester :-) I'm a Japanese living in US.

Though I am not sure whether Flash supports Unicode or not, but if it currently supports Unicode, I hope you can enable not only two byte character languages but also Unicode.

[Bob Hartzell]

It is my understanding that Unicode is not supported by Windows 95 and 98.

[tamichan]

Originally posted by Bob Hartzell
It is my understanding that Unicode is not supported by Windows 95 and 98.

Some Win32 APIs are supported on Windows 9x also. Following URL has more information.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q210341

[johnie]

The Far East versions (Including the Japanese version) of windows support Unicode, MS made 2 APIs for the diffrent versions. That is why there are numourous articles on how to Easternize a Western Windows machine so that Asian software runs on it.

This is one of my general beafs with MS.

To be completly honest I am shocked that KM runs on Far East Versions of Windows at all. Other programs, such as projectors made with SWF Studio, do not.


[Edited by johnie on 01-08-2002 at 09:06 PM]

[FUKUDA Takahisa]

tamichan, Bob, johnie, and others

"A happy new year" into Japanese. "‹Þ‰êV”N"

To shift a responsibility is no good, as me.
Formerly, English education was poor in Japan.
I got to dislike from the first class of English in the junior high school. I'm no good now, too.
I'm anxious for whether or not you understand these sentences.

By the way, basically, it is a right thing.
It support not only two byte character languages but also Unicode.

However, sometimes wish to know.
There are few TrueType Font which are supporting Unicode.
The designer doesn't use only MS-Minchou and MS-Gothic.
A lot of other Fonts, they don't appear in the screen when the designer uses them.

Thanks.

[tamichan]

Fukuda-san, akema****e omedetougozaimsu.

TrueType fonts in Windows are encoded in Unicode. However, only MS-Mincho and MS-Gothic has glyphs for Japanese. If resources for dialog boxes, etc. are created with specific fonts (for example "Arial"), they will not be displayed correctly even if the message strings are translated into Japanese. If no specific fonts are used, Windows will pick up the default system font and there is no problem.

As for me, it is acceptable even if menus, dialog boxes and help panels remain in English as long as the runtime code supports Japanese.

Though I believe that Unicode support is the right direction in the long run, adding two-byte code support would be easier in terms of test efforts. I haven't reverse-engineered KM at all, but I guess following code changes will enable two-byte code support at minimum level:

1. Specify correct character set (SHIFTJIS_CHARSET) for Japanese fonts ("MS Mincho" and "MS Gothic". Note those font names are in Japanese Shift-JIS encoding) in font-related API calls (CreateFontIndirect, etc.)
2. Add more logic not to draw each byte of a two-byte character separately. It will be done using Windows IsDBCSLeadByte API. The API may not exist in English version of Windows, API calls should not be statically linked.

[tamichan]

Originally posted by tamichan
Fukuda-san, akema****e omedetougozaimsu.

I have not noticed that "A Happy New Year" in Japanese contained a four-letter word... :-)

[Bob Hartzell]

Tamichan, are you a programmer? May I email you outside the forum and ask you some questions. I did look at this problem several years ago and found little guidance on the subject. I did save some code snippets somewhere which seemed like the right approach. I need to find them again. Currently I store strings in CString variables and this is a problem for 2 byte characters in Windows 95/98 because accessing each character returns only a single byte.

[tamichan]

Yes, I am a programmer but it's been a while since I worked on Windows programming. I cannot work on your source code directly but I might be able to answer to some general questions on Japanese information processing.

I am not good at MFC at all... But CString always handles one byte as one character. I think you need to use the isleadbyte() C library function to determine whether you have to get one more byte to deal with two-byte code correctly.

[Bob Hartzell]

I was doing a little research yesterday and it appears that some Japanese characters only take one byte so that complicates things tremendously. I will post a question on CodeGuru.

[tamichan]

Following URL contains basic information on MBCS (Multibyte Character Set) programming, though some portion seems outdated.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/de...sdn_mbcssg.asp

[Bob Hartzell]

Excellent article. This should help a lot. Thanks.

[Bob Hartzell]

I am close to having Japanese fonts working. I need a few people to test it for me.

[johnie]

I have some on my machine.

[FUKUDA Takahisa]

It was good, and the enjoyment.

Recently, there was a chance to teach to last time and the same school children again. --It is my side job. -- I used other software without Koolmoves.
I said to the children. "The animation software which can insert Japanese is made now in USA. When it is completed, you are had to use it again."

Because I am not a web designer, it cannot be evaluated that I am adequate. However, I will do its test with pleasure.

[Bob Hartzell]

I got 2-byte character fonts to work. I also got symbol fonts to work. Thanks, Mr. Takahisa for your help.