Thursday, October 21, 2010

Enter Foreign Language for some applications

Modern program usually allows Unicode displays and input. However, many programmer still does not cater to Il8n (Internationalization). How then could I input and read Simplified Chinese instead of English in these programs.

Microsoft did provide some help however limited it is. You could set one language as the "system locale". According to Microsoft help "the system locale is the language that is used to display menus and dialog boxes for programs that do not use Unicode."

Setting it is simple.

  1. Go to "Control Panel".
  2. Click to open "Regional and Language Options".
  3. Click "Administrative" tab.
  4. Under "Language for non-unicode programs 'system locale'", click "change system locale".
  5. Choose the language of your choice and click "ok".
The above applies to Vista only. Also, you would have installed the Simplified Chinese IME. If you can't get it from Microsoft. Go to Google and search for "google IME". Unfortunately, there are only two IME available. The other one is Japanese IME.

I am not sure if Google selectively show IME available for the region. I sure hope so.

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