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ginafromtampa
Inspiring
February 7, 2008
Question

CHM buttons are not localized in a French project (shows English Contents, Index, Search, Print, Hide buttons)

  • February 7, 2008
  • 4 replies
  • 3202 views
I opened an old WinHelp project into my new RoboHelp 7. When I generate the CHM, even with the Project Settings in RoboHelp set to French and running in a French Windows operating system (MS Windows XP Pro 2002 SP 2), the CHM output is still in English. The buttons display in English (Contents, Index, Search, Print, Hide buttons). The title bar of the CHM also says "HTML Help" even though the project title in the Project Settings is "Aide en ligne...".

My Windows Regional Settings through the Control Panel - Regional Options tab is set French (France). On the Languages tab I under Text Services and Input Languages, Details button, I selected French (France) French. On the Advanced tab I selected French. Then I rebooted.

On the language bar on my Task pane, I selected FR. The CHM still displays in English.

Please help! I have to produce 4 CHMS in languages other than English today.

Thanks!
This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

M
Mary_N
Participant
January 2, 2009
Hi!

Eileen - thanks for those well-documented steps. Unfortunately, I was unable to get my buttons to appear in the localized language either. Has anyone had any luck with this issue? Do the buttons appear localized on an operating system set up in the correct language? Thanks!
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Pete_Lees
Participating Frequently
January 3, 2009
Hi, Mary,

> Do the buttons appear localized on an operating system set up in the correct language?

They do, yes, when viewed on a fully localised version of the operating system. On the other hand, I believe that just switching (say) an English Windows computer to the target language may not install the additional HTML Help resource DLL that is required by that language — and consequently the button and tab labels in the help window will continue to be in English. This appears to be the issue that is described in the following thread in the Madcap Flare forum:

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7483

This isn't something that a help author can influence one way or the other by customizing the project or window settings in an individual help file. The language in which the button and tab labels in the help window are displayed is determined at run time (not compile time) by hh.exe, the HTML Help executable. Therefore, every help file on an individual computer will have labels in the same language, regardless of how they were configured and compiled.

Pete
P
Pete_Lees
Participating Frequently
February 7, 2008
Gina,

How do the other .chm files on your machine appear? If one of your .chm files shows the wrong button labels then I'd expect them all to do so. This is because, when you open a .chm file, the HTML Help engine simply checks the current locale and then loads the appropriate language resources from a DLL in the folder %windir%\system32\mui. In other words, none of the settings you've chosen for your help project should affect the button labels in the resulting .chm file.

There's some more information on this here:

http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/hh_info.htm#HHUPD13

With regard to 'HTML Help' appearing in the title bar rather than your specified title text, this is caused by a mismatch between the primary language of the help file and that of the operating system. See:

http://helpware.net/FAR/far_faq.htm#WindowTitle

So if the language of your help file precisely matches that of the machine on which you're opening it, the correct title bar text should appear. Some authors try to build a bit of latitude into this by setting the language of their help files to US English — unfortunately, as I understand it, not something that you can do from within RoboHelp. Instead, you must open the project (.hhp) file in Notepad or HTML Help Workshop and then, in the OPTIONS section, add or modify the Language= line so that it looks like this:

Language=0x409 English (United States)

Because the function of this line is simply to determine the order in which index keywords and search results are sorted, you shouldn't notice any bad effects in your non-English help files.

Pete
G
ginafromtampaAuthor
Inspiring
February 7, 2008
In the Help topic for the language file in the Baggage folder RoboHHRE.lng: "Customize text for localization", it has the following notes. No matter which language file I edit (even the English one and now I'm back to running my Windows operating system in English), the outputs don't show my edits to the language file, such as for the Contents button in the chm. I don't know what it means by "If RoboHHRE.LNG is already in your user's Windows directory". How would it get to the user's Windows directory? Are you supposed to include the language file somehow with your chm output like you used to have to do with .cnt files? Can't understand why the edits to the language files aren't working. Also, I tried to insert "Language=0x409 English (United States)" in the .hhp file, but nothing changed in the chm. The only reference is to a language file in the .hhp file is under [FILES] RoboHHRE.lng. I tried removing the language file, or just adding "Language=0x409 English (United States)", but no change.
By the way, when I select Spanish (Spain) in Project settings, I get some other language in the language file:
[Common]
Contents=Sisukord
Index=Register
Search=Otsing
Glossary==Sõnastik

Notes:

If RoboHHRE.LNG is already in your user's Windows directory, it overrides the file in your Baggage Files folder.

If you do not include the RoboHHRE.LNG file, or omit some values, your project defaults to the English values shown in the previous example.

P
Pete_Lees
Participating Frequently
February 7, 2008
Gina,

You should forget about the LNG file, which isn't used in HTML Help at all; it's entirely a browser-based help thing (WebHelp, etc.).

What I was trying to say is that, as the help author, you don't have any control over the language of the button labels in your .chm files. This is managed by Windows, as you should be able to confirm by looking at any other .chm file on your machine. The fact that you're seeing English text labels where you would expect to see French suggests that there's something slightly askew in your installation of Windows. Perhaps you don't have the French language resource DLL for the HTML Help viewer — %windir%\system32\040C\hhctrlui.dll, I believe — so the help engine is defaulting to English. On French machines where everything is present and correct, the buttons will be appropriately labelled.

Edit: Just to add that the Language= line belongs in the OPTIONS section of the .hhp file, not the FILES section.

Pete
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 7, 2008
I don't know the procedure here but I am trying to find out. However, I am sorry but it will not be today.

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G
ginafromtampaAuthor
Inspiring
February 7, 2008
I also just created a brand new HTML project with Project Settings set to French, generated a chm, and the buttons are all still in English, even though I've changed my regional settings to French.
G
ginafromtampaAuthor
Inspiring
February 7, 2008
Also got this weird warning in the Output view for the chm:

Warning: The size of stop file has to be limited in 512 bytes.

I deleted all the entries in the Stop file and regenerated. Still the buttons are only in English in the chm.
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