I just discovered something about Japanese Windows that may be useful to
pass on to other non-Japanese who use Japanese software on Windows.
Even though my laptop (a Victor MP-XP741) is a proper Japanese PC with Japanese Windows as the OS, I had problems with some Japanese software displaying characters correctly. Most software had no problem.
However, some texts of Norton Anti-Virus, 携快電話, and WinDVD
would display as a string of "?" or other incorrect characters. It was
only some texts, not all texts in the application. I suffered with this problem for over a year before I finally discovered the cause.
When a person uses a foreign Windows PC, he will usually use the Regional
and Language Options (地域と言語のオプション) control panel to be in his native language environment.
One of these areas in this control panel is Standards and Formats (標準と形式), which set the way that numbers, currency, dates,
and the time are displayed. For convenience, there is drop-down menu
of languages that will set all of these at once to the form preferred
in that language. Not surprisingly, I changed this from 日本語
to 英語（米国）on my laptop.
This was the cause of the problem. Apparently, some buggy text output routines use the "language" in Standards and Formats to set the script
for text to be output. This is completely wrong; software should always output text in the script of that text. It certainly should not use a convenience dropdown in Standards and Formats for that purpose!
The solution, for a gaijin using a Japanese Windows PC, is NOT to set
the language in 標準と形式 to his native language. Instead, leave
it set as 日本語, and then use the クスタマイズ button to
change each of the various standards and formats individually to the
form that is preferred in his native language.
By the way, in multi-lingual versions of Windows, there is a setting,
under Language (言語) in the Regional and Language Options (地域と言語のオプション) control panel, to set the language for menus and dialog. That is the correct way to set the language in a multi-lingual environment.
Single-language versions do not have this option; I don't think
that Japanese Windows exists except as a single-language version.
However, English Windows with a language pack adds it.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
On 5/2/2006, Mark Crispin wrote:
I just discovered something about Japanese Windows that may be useful to
pass on to other non-Japanese who use Japanese software on Windows.
Even though my laptop (a Victor MP-XP741) is a proper Japanese PC with
Japanese Windows as the OS, I had problems with some Japanese software
displaying characters correctly. Most software had no problem.
However, some texts of Norton Anti-Virus, 携快電話, and WinDVD
would display as a string of "?" or other incorrect characters.
On 5/2/2006, Mark Crispin wrote:
I just discovered something about Japanese Windows that may be useful to >>> pass on to other non-Japanese who use Japanese software on Windows.
Even though my laptop (a Victor MP-XP741) is a proper Japanese PC with
Japanese Windows as the OS, I had problems with some Japanese software
displaying characters correctly. Most software had no problem.
However, some texts of Norton Anti-Virus, 携快電話, and WinDVD
would display as a string of "?" or other incorrect characters.
Did he visit Japan often? Did he study Japanese?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bishoujo
1989 September 23, Mark Crispin, “bringing stuff into the US from Japan”, in soc.culture.japan (Usenet):
If you are into bishojo, loli-con, or bishonen materials, be advised that customs *does* frown on what might be considered pornography.
On 5/2/2006 1:58 PM, Mark Crispin wrote:
I just discovered something about Japanese Windows that may be useful to
pass on to other non-Japanese who use Japanese software on Windows.
---------- Is this a problem encountered by others???
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
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