Using non-English language

[mlawczys Profile Private message]

Hi,

This topic has been discussed in several posts regarding support ofr German, Japanese and Chinese characters but I still can't get it. I used to be able to use Polish characters with Proshow Gold many years ago. Later this option disappeared and Proshow support coul dnot explain why. YTey told me they never supported it while I have many shows generated back than which use Polish fonts no problem.

For the past several years I was trying to get this capability back and I cannot get around it. On this forum I read that PSP supports Unicode set. There was a good post about it here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20843&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=unicode

I can type Polish character in almost any program on my PC by simply using Alt key with a character. Windows 7 automatically recognizes it because of my keyboard settings. With PSP I can't.

Most Polish characters are not a part of PSP macro set, so using Alt0### is not an option. If I try to use Windows Character Map and simply copy and paste the character I want, it will appear in PSP as a "?" even though I am careful to copy from the same font in the Character Map to the same font in PSP (e.g. from Arial to Arial). Polish character set in Unicode uses &#Xhhh; code and not Alt0hhh. For example: Polish letter L with the dash across it is Ł . But I have no idea how to input it into PSP.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

I've no true understanding of using non-English fonts, though I know it can be done and I also know there are problems implementing them in ProShow. One thing I do know is that ProShow doesn't honor any but the .TTF fonts, so if it's something else you're using such as an .OTF font, it won't work.

Barbara

[mlawczys Profile Private message]

This is a response I got from the Photodex support:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Photodex. ProShow only supports 8-bit TrueType fonts. You will need to be sure that the fonts you are using meet those specifications. If you are using a font that does not meet those specifications, it may not show up in the program or it may not function correctly. However, regarding ProShow supporting Unicode, its a good idea and I will submit it as a suggestion to the appropriate departments for consideration. We appreciate your time and patience in this matter.

Kind Regards,

Jared
Photodex Customer Support
http://www.photodex.com
1-800-37-PHOTO

I interpret it as follows:
- contrary to what was said on this forum in various posts, PSP does not support Unicode. Jasred said that it is a good idea to support it and that he would submit a suggestion
- 8-bit fonts mean Unicode values from 0 to 255. This is exactly what PSP supports in Macros. Characters which have higher Unicode decimal value than 255 require more than 8-bits to encode and thus cannot be supported. A lot of Polish characters have Unicode decimal values just over 255

I just don't understand two things:
- how can people get Japanese and Chinese characters display in PSP? These are definitely way over Unicode value of 255 and require 2 bytes (16 bits) for encoding
- why old versions of PSG supported Polish characters (although Photodex claims they never did - I do have old shows which use Polish characters) and then it got broken?

It is frustrating, because support for foreign languages problem has been resolved over a decade ago and vast majority of programs just do it natively with a simple set-up in Windows. It is called "localization" and it is a bread and butter for any serious s/w product. PSP really cuts its customer share big time by still not supporting it.

Mirek.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Mirek, it appears your only choice will be to find a Polish TrueType font that, when you use it, you'll have to learn the keyboard equivalents for the letters the same as you might with WingDings or WebDings.

Barbara

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

Mirek, it appears your only choice will be to find a Polish TrueType font that, when you use it, you'll have to learn the keyboard equivalents for the letters the same as you might with WingDings or WebDings.
Barbara

Mirek,
I don't think that the situation is as desperate as this
There must be better and shorter ways, but somehow the guy at Photodex didn't point you in the right direction.
If you have a keyboard with Polish special characters, a Windows system that is localized to Poland, and TTF fonts that display those special characters, then Producer should be able to display Polish.

From my experience with foreign keyboards, and alphabets, I know that not all the fonts are capable of displaying the specific characters of a certain language. So, you must make sure that the fonts that you choose, in combination with the ALT key that you mentioned above, do display the characters that you want.

For testing purposes, try to write a text in Notepad (NOT Word from MS Office).
Try all the fonts in Notepad, and then, whatever works for you in Notepad, should also work in Producer.

BTW, when you tried to write in Polish with ProShow Gold, several years ago, was it on a computer with Windows XP? I'm asking this because the localization is done differently in Win 7, so perhaps that is the cause for the differences that you see now.

[mlawczys Profile Private message]

Hi Cherub and Barbara,

Thank you for your advice. Polish characters work in Notepad on my PC with no problems. They work also in all other programs I use such as all MS Office programs, Internet Explorer, Adobe products and virtually all others (I say "virtually all others" because I do not know any program outside of PSP which would not support Polish letters, but maybe, some exist ).

I do not use any special fonts or settings. Standard true type fonts supplied with Windows 7 OS have all the characters I need. Windows 7, by default, supports and supplies Polish true type fonts (as it supports a myriad other languages). In Windows 7 Region and Language settings I simply set my keyboard to English, French and Polish. I can switch between these languages using Windows 7 language bar. If I am at Polish keyboard settings and if I want to type a special Polish letter such as accented "e", I simply hold Alt key and type "e". Works everywhere except PSP.

Western languages are easy with PSP. In the Unicode, French, German and other more popular language characters are coded in the first 256 symbols (values from 0 to 255). This is what fits into 8-bit TTF which PSP claims to support. They also appear in PSP macros (you hold Alt and type decimal value of the character). Polish and other special characters require 16-bit (2-byte) TTF since the decimal values in a Unicode table for these characters are greater than 255.

Yes Cherub - you may be right with the OS I used with Proshow Gold. It was definitely before Windows 7 or Vista. It is very possible that it was Windows XP or, perhaps, earlier version. So maybe the problem is not that something changed in Proshow and they broke the recognition of international fonts, but that OS language handling changed and Proshow stopped working with a new way of handling Unicodes.

In any case, I am still stumped with how to get my Polish characters working in PSP.

If indeed PSP supports full set of Unicodes, can somebody definitely describe the magic required in Windows 7 to make it work? This would probably help a lot of people out there and give us a satisfaction of teaching Photodex about capabilities of their product which they claim do not exist?

Mirek.

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

I'm no expert in Operating Systems, so I really don't know what to tell you.

You haven't mentioned anything about the Language Bar that is present in Windows, when a system can use several languages. Do you have a language bar?
The language bar is not new. In fact, I can't remember any Windows system where I haven't used it (and believe me, there were quite a few that I've used )

When I change the language on my computer, in order to type in Hebrew instead of English, I press on [Alt] and [Shift] together. This causes the language bar to display HE instead of EN (Hebrew instead of English).

Do you have such an option on your computer ?

[mlawczys Profile Private message]

Hi Cherub,

I did mention Window's Language Bar in my last post This is how I change languages in Windows (same as you do). To change the language on my PC, I click on language bar and select a language I want to type in.

Usually I have it set to Polish all the time since Polish characters are a superset of a latin (or English) alphabet. Right now, when I write in English my language settings in Windows is Polish. When I want to type a special Polish letter, I would hold Alt key and type the corresponsing latin alphabet letter.

If you can type Hebrew letters in PSP than you are definitely beyond 8-bit Unicode limit which Photodex claims they have. This would prove that they are wrong and we can indeed have any language supported in PSP.

What is the trick to enable it in PSP while it works with no issues in all other programs?

Mirek.

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

I did mention Window's Language Bar in my last post

Yes, you did. Sorry for missing that part.

If you can type Hebrew letters in PSP than you are definitely beyond 8-bit Unicode limit which Photodex claims they have. This would prove that they are wrong and we can indeed have any language supported in PSP.Mirek.

I wouldn't know about "any" language, but yes, I can type Hebrew. This doesn't mean that there are no issues, though , For example, the direction is all wrong. But one can only expect that much

What is the trick to enable it in PSP while it works with no issues in all other programs?Mirek.

I don't understand why other Polish members of the forum haven't added their comments to this thread. Perhaps you should change the title of this thread to attract them. Write something like "Using Polish in Producer"

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

While the suggested "work arounds" may work in many situations, it may (have not tested) turn out to be an issue if you have a show posted on the sharing site (which uses a "px stream" ) since other users will not have the fonts you used (although if it works for you and you render the output to a mpeg type format, then that becomes a non-problem since you are now only dealing with video frames). Another possible solution - not as elegant, but would work in all situations would be to create your caption/text overlay in something like Photoshop as a png file with transparency which is now an image rather than a font and as such, would work for all situations. Just another possible way of accomplishing what you want to do. I agree that ideally, Proshow would handle all fonts, but that is not currently supported.

mikey

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

...if you have a show posted on the sharing site (which uses a "px stream" ) since other users will not have the fonts you used

It works fine on the sharing site. I've used all kinds of weird fonts on the site, and they all worked. The videos on the site are rendered as videos, which means they're composed of images of the show.

Barbara

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

Mikey,
Barbara is correct. We don't need to have your installed fonts to view your shows correctly. Once uploaded, the px file works like a video, and is the final output for everybody.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Thanks Barbara and Mona - I had assumed the px stream used the fonts on the system. Apparently it "pre-compiles" it to images. That is good to know (now at my age if I can just remember it !! )

mikey

[mlawczys Profile Private message]

Hi Mona,

I didn't specifically target Polish audience since I think it would be useful to try to solve the language problem for everybody. Polish is just an example (albeit quite important to me ). I did try to search Polish language forums and found nothing.

I believe that Barbara is right. I would need a special font which would code Polish characters in a way wingding or symbol fonts work. They map a symbol into an 8-bit representation - something PSP is able to recognize. Unfortunately why would anybody create such a font? It goes against all established standards. No self-respecting international product uses 8-bit language coding - all use 16-bits.

We are at square one - I have to conclude that PSP support 8-bit TTF and this is it. Very limited for reaching international audience. I hope that Photodex takes the feedback seriously and catch up with 21-st century. Although it may be wishful thinking - I did give them this feedback many, many years ago, they thought it was excellent idea, and did exactly nothing

Mirek.

[irwin Profile Private message]

Mirek,

In your Windows settings, do you have Polish as Language for non-Unicode programs?

Vlad