Dir MX: Very urgent: Importing russian text

[Anthony]

Hi,

I posted a message a few month ago to get informed about the potential
difficulties of importing russian text in a Director MX movie. Those who
answered told me that there were no particular precaution to take because it
was just like importing standard text.

Now that I have to do it, I realize that it isn't as simple as they
said. In fact, Director doesn't recognize russian text copied from Microsoft
Word at all.

What is the best way to include russian text in Director (in text
members but also in Lingo scripts)???

Thanks for your help.

Anthony

[Anthony]

Hi,

I posted a message a few month ago to get informed about the potential
difficulties of importing russian text in a Director MX movie. Those who
answered told me that there were no particular precaution to take because it
was just like importing standard text.

Now that I have to do it, I realize that it isn't as simple as they
said. In fact, Director doesn't recognize russian text copied from Microsoft
Word at all.

What is the best way to include russian text in Director (in text
members but also in Lingo scripts)???

Thanks for your help.

Anthony

[Darrel Hoffman]

> I posted a message a few month ago to get informed about the potential

> difficulties of importing russian text in a Director MX movie. Those who
> answered told me that there were no particular precaution to take because it
> was just like importing standard text.

Yeah, whoever told you that was full of $%&

> Now that I have to do it, I realize that it isn't as simple as they
> said. In fact, Director doesn't recognize russian text copied from Microsoft
> Word at all.

No, because Director does not have Unicode support. This is a major complaint from many international users, or people who just
need their product to work on non-English systems.

> What is the best way to include russian text in Director (in text
> members but also in Lingo scripts)???

There's several options, none of them pretty:

- Do your text in Flash. Flash supports Unicode, and this is Macromedia's official solution to this problem at the moment. The
down-side is that you need to purchase and learn another software package, and then figure out how to make Director and Flash talk
to eachother nicely. This also tends to be more of a memory-hog.
- Convert all text to bitmaps. The down-side: You can't edit it easily, nor allow the user to type in their own text.
- Get a faux-Cyrillic font. There are standard TrueType fonts that allow you to type in various other alphabets, including
Cyrillic. The down-side is that you can't simply copy/paste Unicode Russian text into this font, as the character mapping will be
all wrong. You'd need to manually re-type it, and learn which keys on your Roman-alphabet keyboard correspond to which Cyrillic
characters, and probably keep the Character Map(PC)/Key Caps(Mac) window open to get some characters. (Cyrillic has IIRC 33
characters? I know it's a bit more than the Roman alphabet, so there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondance in this case.) This will be a
huge pain. I would not recommend trying to do this with your Lingo scripts, but just stick to using it in your text/field members.
At least it's not as bad as something like Hebrew or Arabic, where you have to type everything backwards, since it's read
right-to-left and Director only reads left-to-right. And don't even get me started on Asian languages...
- I've heard that some people have had success if the computer you're working on is specifically installed with a Russian copy of
Windows. English/French installation with Russian character support is not enough; it must be a specifically Russian install.
However, this will only work if all your users also have a Russian copy of Windows.

That's about it, unfortunately. You can add your voice to the many clamoring for Unicode support at:
[url]www.macromedia.com/go/wish[/url]
Maybe they'll listen one of these days and take the time to add it in the next version... Don't hold your breath, though. People
have been begging for this for several versions now...

[Anthony]

Thank you for your documented answer Darrel. I really don't understand why
Macromedia didn't make more efforts on making Director's compatible with
Unicode.

Good evening.

Anthony.

"Darrel Hoffman" <I.dont@think.so.net> a écrit dans le message de news:
blhacs$p3j$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> > I posted a message a few month ago to get informed about the

potential

> > difficulties of importing russian text in a Director MX movie. Those who
> > answered told me that there were no particular precaution to take

because it

> > was just like importing standard text.

>
> Yeah, whoever told you that was full of $%&
>

> > Now that I have to do it, I realize that it isn't as simple as they
> > said. In fact, Director doesn't recognize russian text copied from

Microsoft

> > Word at all.

>
> No, because Director does not have Unicode support. This is a major

complaint from many international users, or people who just

> need their product to work on non-English systems.
>

> > What is the best way to include russian text in Director (in text
> > members but also in Lingo scripts)???

>
> There's several options, none of them pretty:
>
> - Do your text in Flash. Flash supports Unicode, and this is Macromedia's

official solution to this problem at the moment. The

> down-side is that you need to purchase and learn another software package,

and then figure out how to make Director and Flash talk

> to eachother nicely. This also tends to be more of a memory-hog.
> - Convert all text to bitmaps. The down-side: You can't edit it easily,

nor allow the user to type in their own text.

> - Get a faux-Cyrillic font. There are standard TrueType fonts that allow

you to type in various other alphabets, including

> Cyrillic. The down-side is that you can't simply copy/paste Unicode

Russian text into this font, as the character mapping will be

> all wrong. You'd need to manually re-type it, and learn which keys on

your Roman-alphabet keyboard correspond to which Cyrillic

> characters, and probably keep the Character Map(PC)/Key Caps(Mac) window

open to get some characters. (Cyrillic has IIRC 33

> characters? I know it's a bit more than the Roman alphabet, so there

isn't a 1-to-1 correspondance in this case.) This will be a

> huge pain. I would not recommend trying to do this with your Lingo

scripts, but just stick to using it in your text/field members.

> At least it's not as bad as something like Hebrew or Arabic, where you

have to type everything backwards, since it's read

> right-to-left and Director only reads left-to-right. And don't even get

me started on Asian languages...

> - I've heard that some people have had success if the computer you're

working on is specifically installed with a Russian copy of

> Windows. English/French installation with Russian character support is

not enough; it must be a specifically Russian install.

> However, this will only work if all your users also have a Russian copy of

Windows.

>
> That's about it, unfortunately. You can add your voice to the many

clamoring for Unicode support at:

> [url]www.macromedia.com/go/wish[/url]
> Maybe they'll listen one of these days and take the time to add it in the

next version... Don't hold your breath, though. People

> have been begging for this for several versions now...
>
>

[Darrel Hoffman]

> Thank you for your documented answer Darrel. I really don't understand why

> Macromedia didn't make more efforts on making Director's compatible with
> Unicode.

Heh. Join the club.

[Paul Gorodyansky]

Hi,
"Anthony" <anthony.heuveline@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message news:<blgscv$stj$1@forums.macromedia.com>...

> Hi,
>
> I posted a message a few month ago to get informed about the potential
> difficulties of importing russian text in a Director MX movie. Those who
> answered told me that there were no particular precaution to take because it
> was just like importing standard text.

Probably because they worked under _Russian_ version of MS Windows.

>
> Now that I have to do it, I realize that it isn't as simple as they
> said. In fact, Director doesn't recognize russian text copied from Microsoft
> Word at all.
>
> What is the best way to include russian text in Director (in text
> members but also in Lingo scripts)???
>

Before you try the methods that Darrel listed -
try much simpler one first (I don't know whether it will work
in your case):

If you need to copy text from MS Word, you may try a work-around
explained in the Chapter 2 "Copy/Paste" of the
"Unicode related issues" section of my site.

--
Regards,
Paul Gorodyansky
"Cyrillic (Russian): instructions for Windows and Internet":
[url]http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/[/url]

[SafariTECH]

If it is just using a True-Type Russian font then it should be no different so long as the font is selectable in the text member's font selection.

There are, however, fonts that will not work - double-bit fonts (includes Russian) may fail to display properly unless the project is made from a localized version of Director on a localized OS.

In other words, using actual Russian input, which uses double-bit fonts, may not work unless you are using an actual Russian version of the OS and a Russian version of Director (which they don't make).

If you are developing on a US/English OS with US/English Dir, actual Russian fonts may not work.
If you are developing on a Russian OS with US/English Dir, actual Russian fonts may not work.

Unless you can find a standard TTF-style font that contains the Russian alphabet and characters, you may not be able to use Russian in your project without making graphics of the text you need.

Sorry if this is not the news you wanted to hear...

(I took a quick look at fontfreak.com but didn't see anything I thought looked like you needed)

============================
Glen Palmer
SafariTECH
Cold Fusion Specialist
[url]www.safaritech.com[/url]
============================

Referring URLs
[url]http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/localization_issues.htm[/url]

[Paul Gorodyansky]

Hello!

"SafariTECH" <contact@safaritech.com> wrote in message
news:<bli3ng$e41$1@forums.macromedia.com>...

>...
> Referring URLs
> [url]http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/localization_issues.htm[/url]

Now I understand better why you wrote so strange and confusing things
about Russian fonts - you used that page! :)

The above page is so-o-o silly and so incorrect that it made me laugh -
looks like the person who wrote that did NOT read _any_ of
the *widely* available sources (books, well-known Internet sites, etc.)
about Character Sets and languages (I am giving _my_ Ref. URLs below,
after my signature).

The funniest quotes (so incorrect and impossible to imagine where s/he
got such idea!):
a)
"The Single Byte Character Set (SBCS) is used to create ASCII language"

I wonder when s/he wrote that what was s/he thinking (or drinking)? :)
What is 'ASCII' language???
The quickest look at _any_ book or search on Internet tells that
ASCII is US English only set of symbols, 7-bit, not a language and
to call (as s/he did) say French (8-bit language by the way)
'ASCII language' does not make any sense whatsoever.

b) "OS Language Chart
.....
Double Byte OS:
++++++++++++++
...
Arabic
Chinese
German
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian"

I started thinking that it was a college-age intern who just typed
whatever comes to her/his head without looking into any materials :)
Russian is NOT a double-byte language. German, Portuguese, and
Arabic are also NOT double-byte languages.

================================================== ========

So just let you guys know that you should NOT ever look at that page
unless you want to have some laughs.

Glen, if you don't mind, let's talk about Russian fonts, because
what you wrote is very confusing:

>
> There are, however, fonts that will not work - double-bit fonts

^^^^^^^^^^

> (includes Russian) may fail to display properly unless the project
> is made from a localized version of Director on a localized OS.

You probably meant 'double BYTE', right?
But as I mentioned above, your Ref page was wrong, Russian fonts
are Single-Byte fonts. Only Japanese/Chinese/Korean are double-byte
encoding fonts.

>
> If you are developing on a US/English OS with US/English Dir, actual

^^^^^^

> Russian fonts may not work.

What are 'actual' fonts? Are there 'fictional' ones? :)

>
> Unless you can find a standard TTF-style font that contains the
> Russian alphabet and characters, you may not be able to use Russian in
> your project without making graphics of the text you need.

But he reported that he does have such fonts - did you read that
he uses them Ok in say MS Word?
For example, under Windows/XP such 'standard TTF-style' fonts
as "Arial" and "Times New Roman" do contain
'Russian alphabet and characters'.

>
> Sorry if this is not the news you wanted to hear...

Let's wait until he tries work-around methods I suggested in my
previuous message.

--
Regards,
Paul Gorodyansky
"Cyrillic (Russian): instructions for Windows and Internet":
[url]http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/[/url]

P.S. *very* well-known books, Internet sites and Reference
materials about Character Sets, fonts, etc.:
[url]http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars/index.html[/url]
[url]http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/cphome.asp[/url]
[url]http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/dis_v1/disv1.asp[/url]
[url]http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Globalization/[/url]
[url]http://www.w3.org/International/resources.html[/url]
[url]http://www.i18ngurus.com/[/url]