Customized Skins in Non-English Projects

[glundeen]

I have a customized skin that when used non-English projects, it omits special characters in the buttons for Contents and Index. I didn't create the skin so I don't have Flash. Any suggestions on how to fix the buttons to display the missing characters?

[Guest]

Welcome to the forums.

What version of RH are you using? The answer depends on that because RH7 has unicode support, but earlier versions don't. Are you using a Latin-based language, so you're missing characters like vowels with accents?

In your output files, look for wfres.xml and open it in a text editor. Check to make sure that the text for those buttons is correct (not corrupted).

Post back with what you find.

--Ben

[Guest]

Another thought (it's been awhile since I had to mess with this stuff, so I don't remember the magic combination). The buttons usually use common fonts like Arial, but if yours don't, that may cause problems. So if the font isn't Arial or even Times New Roman, see if you can edit your skin file (.fhs) to specify Arial as the font for each button.

[glundeen]

I'm using RH7. Yes, I'm missing characters with accents.

I checked the wfres.xml file and the text is correct. It contains the characters with accents.

The .fhs file is greek to me but at the top, it references the font as Arial 8pt. From what I can tell, there's no font reference for each button.

Also, I have two customized skins for two different projects and the difference is the color scheme. The skin for the other project works fine and it appears that the .fhs files are the same. The gal who created the skins modified the first skin (that works) and saved it as a different skin (doesn't work). The skin button files (.fla and .swf) are the files that changed. Of course, she's no longer with the company.

[RoboWizard]

Hi glundeen

Perhaps try copying the .LNG file from the working to the non-working project?

Cheers... Rick

[Guest · Accepted solution]

If she's no longer with the company and she was using Flash, could it by chance be a company license for Flash that you could take over...?

Rick referred to the LNG file, which exists in both the source files and the output files. Do the copying and pasting with the source versions. (The output version will be overwritten from the source version every time.)

If Rick's suggestion doesn't work, the only other thing I can think of would be to check the .fla files themselves in Flash. The person who tweaked the files may have done something to the dynamic text fields for the button labels. If you can get a copy of Flash, you could check two things on the button label text field (double-click the Label object twice to get to this point):

1. See if "Use device fonts" is selected in a dropdown on the left side of the Properties panel. This selection won't let you embed fonts. If it's selected, try #2 below instead. If it isn't, select it, export the movie, and put it in your output files.

2. Change "Use device fonts" to "Anti-alias for animation." Click the Embed button. Select every option with Latin in it, and click OK. Export to a movie, and put it in your output files.

Note that you'd have to do this for each button that isn't displaying the characters properly.

Hope this helps,

Ben

[glundeen]

Thanks so much for the information.

The LNG file didn't work so I installed a 30-day trial of Flash and muddled my way through changing the buttons. Step 1 didn't work but Step 2 did. Rather than selecting just the Latin options, I selected all because I'm working with both European and Asian languages.

Thanks for your steps. It would've taken me a long time to figure out how to make that change.

[Guest]

You may have noticed that the more characters you embed, the larger the movie ends up being, but that may not be a concern. Glad to help.