Do those MSIs have embedded streams? Might those streams contain transforms? Transforms can change the codepage of a database.
I don't know if Orca shows the summary-codepage. I believe it just shows the database codepage. There also do exist many non-Unicode multi-byte codepages (there are something like three different ones for Japanese alone, any one of which will work for pretty much anyone) which is how most multi-byte scripts are supported in Windows Installer. The Unicode-only languages are, for the most part, for languages using writing scripts that were added to the universe of MSFT operating systems after Windows 98 was released. UTF-8 databases will have a codepage of 65001. -----Original Message----- From: Tony [mailto:yellowjacketl...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 1:44 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Build time selection of codepage... Thanks. While looking a quite a few msi with Orca, I see many have their code page set to 0. Which you mentioned means "ASCII" (7-bit). However, many of these same msi have dialogs which contain multi-byte characters when installed on multi-byte OS platforms (like Chinese and Japanese), how is this possible? Or is that what you mean by having a "UTF-8 database"? I know UTF-8 encoding supports multi-byte character sets. So, maybe that is how these msi are working? On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Blair <os...@live.com> wrote: > If you notice there are two places in the authoring where you set codepages > (once in the Product element for the database, and once in the Package > element for the "SummaryCodepage"). While there are warnings in MSDN against > using utf-8 for the database, experience has demonstrated a prohibition (at > least with MSI 3.x) of using it for the summary codepage since the MSI will > be seen as corrupted by the operating system if you attempt that. > > There are several (generally newer) languages that use scripts for which > non-Unicode codepages don't exist for Windows (at least not provided by > MSFT). Most of the various languages from India, for example. What I did for > my teams was to require that the text in the summary information stream > remain in English and be constrained to 7-bit ASCII (MSI recognizes that as > the codepage "0") while the database would take the most appropriate > codepage for the language/culture it was targeting (substituting utf-8 when > the default codepage according to .Net was utf-16). > > The rational for that decision was that an effort was made to enact the > concept "English is just another language" which forces good globalization > practices but requires that everything localizable be fully localizable. > Since we couldn't represent the text in the summary information stream in > all of the target languages, and since we never exposed our MSIs to the > clients directly, the decision was made that the text in the summary > information stream wasn't localizable and it was removed from all > globalization concerns (the only thing that is "localized" is the language > setting). > > If you aren't targeting any languages that don't have codepages you will > likely be fine but if you are contemplating targeting any of those languages > you may want to consider how you will deal with the difference in support > available from Windows Installer between summary information and the rest of > the database. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Tony [mailto:yellowjacketl...@gmail.com] > Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 7:12 AM > To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Build time selection of codepage... > >> The biggest gotcha is that the summary codepage cannot be set to UTF-8 >> (unlike the rest of the database) and I tend to force ASCII-7 (and thus NO >> localization) for the summary codepage myself (since I have usually had to >> deal with "unicode-only" languages). > > You lost me here. I understood the first part... > > On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Blair <os...@live.com> wrote: >> Easiest way is via .WXL files. Since each can contain just one culture you >> simply use that file to set the codepage (and don't set the codepage in > the >> database code itself). The biggest limitation with this idea is you can't >> directly set the summary codepage this way, but you can use loc variables >> (e.g. "!(loc.SummaryCodePage)") for that, so you achieve the same > effective >> result. >> >> The biggest gotcha is that the summary codepage cannot be set to UTF-8 >> (unlike the rest of the database) and I tend to force ASCII-7 (and thus NO >> localization) for the summary codepage myself (since I have usually had to >> deal with "unicode-only" languages). >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Tony [mailto:yellowjacketl...@gmail.com] >> Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 11:41 AM >> To: WiX Users >> Subject: [WiX-users] Build time selection of codepage... >> >> Is it possible to specify the codepage value at build time based on >> the build culture and/or build configuration name? >> >> -- >> Tony >> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> -- >> This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community >> Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support >> A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and > easy >> Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev >> _______________________________________________ >> WiX-users mailing list >> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> >> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- >> This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community >> Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support >> A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and > easy >> Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev >> _______________________________________________ >> WiX-users mailing list >> WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users >> > > > > -- > Tony > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community > Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support > A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy > Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers > http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community > Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support > A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy > Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers > http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev > _______________________________________________ > WiX-users mailing list > WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users > -- Tony ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
