Language Support : TEST Patch P3

[Scawen]

OK..... here it is, you can now see Katakana, Cyrillic, Greek and various previously unsupported European characters on your screen! :)

That is... if you are from somewhere that uses those characters, or if you meet someone from there when you are online. :D

This is because 6 new Windows code pages have been introduced in addition to Latin-1 so making a total of 7. For more info you should read the first post on this thread, which describes in detail who will benefit from the new code page support : http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=2254

Other Fixes :

- Incorrect fuel amount transferred to new player when taking over car
- Faulty online host sometimes causing LFS to hang in List of Games

Download TEST Patch P3 :

http://www.liveforspeed.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_S2_ALPHA_PATCH_P3.zip

It's a TEST patch - there may be problems - do let us know of any you find. I expect to release another TEST Patch P4 quite soon, with some more fixes and more translations. There are some being developed at the moment, including Russian, Greek, Japanese. You may be able to find them in the languages section or their authors may post here when they are ready.

[tristancliffe]

Great. Another milestone in LFS's history - proper multiple language support. I'm d/ling it now, even if I stand little to gain from it (partly to help bug test, and partly cos it makes me feel good having the latest version!)

[D34N0]

Great. Another milestone in LFS's history - proper multiple language support. I'm d/ling it now, even if I stand little to gain from it (partly to help bug test, and partly cos it makes me feel good having the latest version!)

:iagree:

[colcob]

Ah, but look on the bright side, he's back on the treadmill, and once the language patches are done, Physics will follow :) :)

[Scawen]

Yeah, you have something to gain! You can have a Japanese name! :)

Copy this and paste into LFS : ^JÒÓÔÕÖ× <-- it will appear in Japanese Katakana!

Warning - technical explanation that you don't need to know :

^J can select the Japanese code page
^C selects Cyrillic
^G selects Greek
^T selects Turkish
^E selects Central European
^B selects Baltic
^L selects Latin-1

And you can type any character from any code page, by using the ALT+xxx keypress (when xxx are numbers, NOT on the numeric keypad). xxx refers to the position in the codepages (from 32 to 255).

[xaotik]

Haha, this is great - it's funny seeing LFS in greek... not to mention seeing the phrasing errors I've made in the translation so far...

Thanks! :)

EDIT:
Every time I send a message in greek LFS says: "Added ID G" right before displaying the message I typed.

[axus]

Awesome, Scawen... I am bulgarian by nationality... I'll try let a few freinds know about this and hopefully they will try LFS out.

[Chaos]

Hmm ahead of schedule, good work! :thumb:
Czech language seems O.K.

[xaotik]

Actually, the "Added ID G" message pops up whenever I type even a single greek character in any textbox - then if I re-access the same textbox I get "Removed G"... poor G :(

I think maybe it's some debugging message you've left active?

[ORION]

hehe now learning Czech with Devil 007 will be even more challengind for me :P :D

[GP4Flo]

I just noticed that I cannot write the § character, I only get an empty box []. Not a new bug, as it didn't work in S1 either.
Edit: You can write this char by typing Alt + 0167

There is a small issue with the codepage selection. When I try to select Central European by typing ^E, LFS writes an Ê. Not a big problem, because it's still possible to select the codepage, by pressing ^ SPACE E.

[Chaos]

so a minor bug in the czech language, the big letter E with wedge can not be written, small one works...

[Scawen]

Thanks for the feedback - those issues / minor bugs should easy to fix. I knew there would be issues because it's quite a big piece of work :)

GP4Flo : I will add that squiggly character for you, no problem. But about the ^E, that must be some funny thing with the German keyboard input.

[XRRoy]

good to see that the development is on his way again :thumb:

downloading and testing the patch now, as usual :D

[Nick_ll]

Just for input, in french the ^ is a special character too.
â ê î ô û
^b ^c ^d ^f ^g ^h ^j
As you can see it works that way with vowels (and I have a ^ button on my kb here, not shift+6).

[Scawen]

Nick : Thanks. I have moved that info about the ^ key into a special thread because it's a bit off topic :)

[GianniC]

Maybe kind off odd and foolish question, but if you don't speak/need the new languages who've been added, you don't have to download the test patch huh? I mean, has no influence on racing mathers and hotlaps stuff ?

[tristancliffe]

There is a bug fix or two in there too y'know ;)

[nesrulz]

:ices_rofl:eclipsee_:clapclap::banana:

Thanks You !!!

[Neokiller]

nice one, thanks

[Scawen]

Maybe kind off odd and foolish question, but if you don't speak/need the new languages who've been added, you don't have to download the test patch huh? I mean, has no influence on racing mathers and hotlaps stuff ?It's quite a good idea to get the patch, for anyone who normally goes online, as it seems to be working ok, if they don't mind doing the quick unzip. Because then if other people talk in Russian or Greek, you will see Russian or Greek... if you have the old version, you would just see an apparently random series of strange characters! :D

But on the other hand, some people seem to get a bit upset if there are too many patches... they seem to find it a bit disturbing to have to unzip a new patch. That's why there's a big warning that it's a TEST patch and you really don't need to get it. :)

There will probably be a few more TEST patches before there's an official patch which will be strongly recommended! :)

[DodgeRacer]

There will probably be a few more TEST patches before there's an official patch which will be strongly recommended! :)


must you tease us like this? the emu is getting anxious :D:nod:

But I appreciate you adding languages, some of the members of my message boards speak greek, this will surely help me win them over (to get lfs) :D

[detail]

Indeed, this works fine! Hope to see it soon released! A presto go to finish my translation. :thumb:

[detail]

Scawen, I've edited Russian.txt file and looked how the letters look in LFS. I've instantly got a fix request: the letter д (Д) hangs it's legs below the line level like ц (Ц). The last one is made correctly, but, please fix the first one. Now with д standing high the text looks like foolish, like the letters have gone mad (something like "CrAzY hAx0r"). :)

[Scawen]

Scawen, I've edited Russian.txt file and looked how the letters look in LFS. I've instantly got a fix request: the letter д (Д) hangs it's legs below the line level like ц (Ц). The last one is made correctly, but, please fix the first one. Now with д standing high the text looks like foolish, like the letters have gone mad (something like "CrAzY hAx0r"). :)Thanks - will do. Please make sure you check all the letters, size, shape and position.

Same for the Greek guys please - it's easy to make changes if you spot something strange about them. They all look strange to me! :D

[detail]

Another issue: when I switch to Russian in LFS, I can't call any hotkey, LFS doesn't recognize them, I need to switch back to English, then back to Russian.

Is it possible to make LFS understand other keyboard layouts? (I hope so, since you've asked us to press a key :))

p.s.: got some other corrections, will send them privately.

[Scawen]

Another issue: when I switch to Russian in LFS, I can't call any hotkey, LFS doesn't recognize them, I need to switch back to English, then back to Russian.

Is it possible to make LFS understand other keyboard layouts? (I hope so, since you've asked us to press a key :))Hmm, i don't really know what you mean, about switching to Russian and switching to English. LFS is supposed to select the Cyrillic code page as soon as you run it, then you should be able to type Russian characters or English characters, in the normal way that Windows allow you to do it.

Well that is how i understand it - i really don't know anything about Windows interface for switching code pages - i've never used a keyboard that can type non-english characters.

As far as i know, no-one should need to press a key unless they want to use some other code page. Are you talking about a Windows thing or a LFS thing? I think you willl have to explain the bug step by step because i'm quite confused!

[Misko]

Few little problems with "Balkan" letters: Capital ŠČĆ and Ž are not big enough, simply theres no room for the little "thingies" over them, so thats staying as it is I suppose. Small ć looks pretty similar to small č. That "thingie" on ć should be maybe looking more angled to the right somehow. :)

In Serbia we use both Latin or Cyrillic letters, and switching between them is quite difficult in LFS right now. We use different keyboards for those and in Windows its enough to do just that, switch keyboard (language) and other codepage is selected (I think). In LFS first I have to type ^C then switch to cyrillic keyboard then cyrillic letters are there. And now the same problem as detail said: to type next message I have to switch the keyboard back to latin to type the T as in cyrillic keyboard that key enters a different character (also a T but cyrillic T). We can always use latin so this is not a big problem for us though.

And now the language files. If I enter some of our letters in the strings they don't show up in the game, they show wrongly. They show correctly only if I enter ^E (for Central European) in every string there in language file. What kind of solution is there (will be) for this?

OK enough criticism, its only the small things, otherwise its absolutely great that we have this. :)

[tristancliffe]

Rest your brain dear fellow. Go to bed, and work on it in the morning...


They say a picture tells a thousand words. But Scawen has had to draw a thousand pictures to write the words anyway. Weird...

[Scawen]

...In Serbia we use both Latin or Cyrillic letters, and switching between them is quite difficult in LFS right now. We use different keyboards for those and in Windows its enough to do just that, switch keyboard (language) and other codepage is selected (I think). In LFS first I have to type ^C then switch to cyrillic keyboard then cyrillic letters are there. And now the same problem as detail said: to type next message I have to switch the keyboard back to latin to type the T as in cyrillic keyboard that key enters a different character (also a T but cyrillic T). We can always use latin so this is not a big problem for us though.Hmm, maybe i need to make LFS check the currently active codepage more often (once each time you open a new message box - or do you need to change codepage within the same message?). I'll think about this and maybe we can try something tomorrow. I guess this is what detail is talking about. It's quite bad that you have to use the ^L and ^C keys - the whole idea is that LFS should be selecting the correct code page. It was supposed to work intuitively and no need to mess around with those keys.

And now the language files. If I enter some of our letters in the strings they don't show up in the game, they show wrongly. They show correctly only if I enter ^E (for Central European) in every string there in language file. What kind of solution is there (will be) for this?That's the easiest thing of all :) You can see the first line in the translation (tx_codepage)... well, that must be set to the correct code page. The available code page numbers are shown in the preview thread.

By the way, which translation are you doing, have you written to Victor about it? We have an online translation system and various translations are being developed at the moment.

[detail]

As far as i know, no-one should need to press a key unless they want to use some other code page. Are you talking about a Windows thing or a LFS thing? I think you willl have to explain the bug step by step because i'm quite confused!
I'll try to explain. Well, to type in cyrillic one must switch his keyboar layout to his language, Russian for instance.

But with this layout, when i press "t" on the keyboard, LFS receives cyrillic "е" (similar to latin, but completely different code) and doesn't open the chat dialogue. The same for showing forces (cyrillic "п" instead of "f"): when Russian layout is selected, LFS doesn't change anything.

In Windows and MS Office you can press Ctrl + Z in any layout (in Russian the system will receive Ctrl + Я) the effect will be the same. This is because they've made a special correspondence table for QWERTY and standard russian keyboard.

[axus]

Is it just me or has the font changed slightly? The "e" looks a bit different. :)

[xaotik]

I'll try to explain. Well, to type in cyrillic one must switch his keyboar layout to his language, Russian for instance.

Ofcourse, this same problem exists with the Greek support as well. Noticed it last night.

It looks like LFS captures hotkeys based on their value so if the user sends it a non-latin one it doesn't recognize it.

[detail]

As for some letters, here is a file with PSD image with proper sizes of two letters.

First, the joints of sticks of "И" aren't wider than the ends of the letter. Second, the letter "Д" is less wide, you'll see in the image a rough example of how it's measured and an illustration of how both letters ought look.

[Misko]

Hmm, maybe i need to make LFS check the currently active codepage more often (once each time you open a new message box - or do you need to change codepage within the same message?). I'll think about this and maybe we can try something tomorrow. I guess this is what detail is talking about. It's quite bad that you have to use the ^L and ^C keys - the whole idea is that LFS should be selecting the correct code page. It was supposed to work intuitively and no need to mess around with those keys.Before this patch my Windows was set to 1252 codepage as language.exe said and I tried the patch first like that. Our characters didn't show when I typed with Serbian (Latin) or Cyrillic keyboard. When I changed to 1250 in Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Language for non-Unicode programs (and language.exe confirmed that), central european latin characters then worked in LFS with correct keyboard, but switching to cyrillic keyboard did nothing but show weird characters. Not without typing in ^C first. :) So I guess switching the keyboard in Windows XP doesn't tell LFS anything?

Here's what language.exe says:
Language: English
OEM Codepage: 852
ANSI Codepage: 1250
Language ID: 0409
Locale: 00000409

That part stays the same and the lower part changes when I change the keyboard:

Serbian (Latin):
Keyboard Layout: 081a081a
Keyboard Layout Name: 0000081A
Serbian (Cyrillic):
Keyboard Layout: 0c1a0c1a
Keyboard Layout Name: 00000C1A
English (United States):
Keyboard Layout: 04090409
Keyboard Layout Name: 00000409


We don't need to mix serbian latin and cyrillic in one message, in fact that would be rather hm strange. What is useful, that I can think of, is typing in an english word here and there and that already works by just selecting a keyboard (this does not change the codepage but first half of every codepage is the same - english). Who knows, maybe it'd be useful to someone to mix codepages in one message sometimes?
That's the easiest thing of all :) You can see the first line in the translation (tx_codepage)... well, that must be set to the correct code page. The available code page numbers are shown in the preview thread.

By the way, which translation are you doing, have you written to Victor about it? We have an online translation system and various translations are being developed at the moment.Sweeet, just added tx_codepage 1250 at the beginning and all is well, thanks. :)

Didn't know about this translation system when we started but couple of us have already practicaly finished Serbian translation and help weeks ago. Just need to write it in proper characters now, and find a better solution for couple of terms. I'd better contact Victor anyway. :)

[xaotik]

Another minor addition I just thought of would be to have the language name as a string inside the file instead of the filename itself. Because renaming the file for example into the greek word for "greek" doesn't seem to work (LFS doesn't know it's supposed to be handling a different codepage for the given filename and so just uses the latin-1 character set).

[Scawen]

OK... so detail and Mikso, you were in fact talking about quite different things.

For detail, everything's ok, you can type in Russian and English - no problem with text entry in text boxes. The only problem is the various unassignable game keys... ok i'll think about that.

For Mikso, the problem is that you want to use two completely different code pages. You are right, switching the keyboard layout doesn't do anything - the only thing that affects LFS is the "ANSI Codepage" reported by language.exe. I think i could make LFS check the ANSI Codepage more often, but i'm not sure that would solve the problem for you. I guess it could solve the problem, if it's easy to change that value in Windows - but maybe that's not as easy to change on the fly, as the keyboard layout? An alternative would be to provide a drop down box, so you can manually select the code page. So LFS just does the auto select once at startup (as it does now) and you can change it any time after that - no need to type ^C every time when you have switched to Cyrillc mode.

axus : I made minor updates to some of the characters. The e looked a bit ugly to me so i gave it that curved edge. But i'm not sure that was a good idea, as unlike in handwriting, a typed e seems to have a flat line in the middle. Do you think it looked better before? It's easy to change back.

Everyone else : Thanks for the comments. I'll go through the thread and see how many of the updates and improvements can be done.

[axus]

I like it better now to be honest. Some of the characters seem a bit less edgy, its easier on the eye to read somehow I feel.

[tristancliffe]

The curved e I like when it's small (i.e. like your names at the bottom of the main menu), but when it's larger, as in the words 'Multiplayer' it looks wrong.

Also has the x changed, or have I only just noticed how odd it is? It's more like an algebraic x (which I have no idea how to type) than a normal x.

[nesrulz]

In Serbian.txt this letters is big.
Why in game look like this?

[Scawen]

In Serbian.txt this letters is big.
Why in game look like this?That's because the capital letters with accents are drawn small to fit in the space available.

I agree, it looks a bit silly. But don't worry!

...because i'm already working on that. :) The accented capitals will appear the correct size when you get patch P4...

[nesrulz]

That's because the capital letters with accents are drawn small to fit in the space available.

I agree, it looks a bit silly. But don't worry!

...because i'm already working on that. :) The accented capitals will appear the correct size when you get patch P4...

Thank You !

[Scawen]

As for some letters, here is a file with PSD image with proper sizes of two letters...Thanks.

What about "CAPITAL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN"... should the upturn in fact be higher than the top of all the other capital leters? In LFS at the moment, it is not, the flat bar has been lowered - but i think this is wrong...

[ EDIT : it's ok, i've figured it out, the top bar should be the same height as all the other capitals, and the upturn should go up from there, in the "accent area"... so in a sense, the upturn is sort of like an accent but connected to the main character ]

[noizz]

I don't wont to be an ungrateful [beep], but all of the acutes (central european) characters are wrong. I see that Misko already mentioned ć as an example of that. The issue is that the that acute is wrong.

Here's some info by a typography Pro on Polish Diacritics (http://www.twardoch.com/download/polishhowto/kreska.html).

The bottom line - if you'll ever have a few minutes left, please make the acutes more narrow, more angled and starting in the center of the glyph.

Thank you.

[detail]

Thanks.

What about "CAPITAL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN"... should the upturn in fact be higher than the top of all the other capital leters? In LFS at the moment, it is not, the flat bar has been lowered - but i think this is wrong...

[ EDIT : it's ok, i've figured it out, the top bar should be the same height as all the other capitals, and the upturn should go up from there, in the "accent area"... so in a sense, the upturn is sort of like an accent but connected to the main character ]
You mean "Г" with upturn? (it's probably Ukrainian, btw :)), I think yes, it should be above tops of capitals, as well as the arc of "Й", but I've already noticed that it's impossible right now.

[p.s. just noticed your another message. Good news, thanks! :thumb: ]

[GianniC]

Thanks for the reply ;)
Downloading as I'm typing now. Nice feedback of greek people and all !

[detail]

Another problem: I use 3 keyboard layouts, and when I switch to Italian, instead of letters with diacritics now I see cyrillic: ì ù è ò à => м щ и т а.

Okay, enough for today. Wish me success tomorrow, I'm going to pass TOEFL exam, Test of English as a Foreign Language. Abuse me as much as you can since 03:30 till 07:30 CET (according to our superstitions this gives luck :D).

[Scawen]

Another problem: I use 3 keyboard layouts, and when I switch to Italian, instead of letters with diacritics now I see cyrillic: ì ù è ò à => м щ и т а.Same problem as Misko reported...

Okay, enough for today. Wish me success tomorrow, I'm going to pass TOEFL exam, Test of English as a Foreign Language. Abuse me as much as you can since 03:30 till 07:30 CET (according to our superstitions this gives luck :D).Good luck :)

It's too early to abuse you so i'll leave that to someone else :D

[Scawen]

The bottom line - if you'll ever have a few minutes left, please make the acutes more narrow, more angled and starting in the center of the glyph.

Thank you.Done - it will be in P4, along with most of the other requests in this thread.

[Misko]

For Mikso, the problem is that you want to use two completely different code pages. You are right, switching the keyboard layout doesn't do anything - the only thing that affects LFS is the "ANSI Codepage" reported by language.exe. I think i could make LFS check the ANSI Codepage more often, but i'm not sure that would solve the problem for you. I guess it could solve the problem, if it's easy to change that value in Windows - but maybe that's not as easy to change on the fly, as the keyboard layout? An alternative would be to provide a drop down box, so you can manually select the code page. So LFS just does the auto select once at startup (as it does now) and you can change it any time after that - no need to type ^C every time when you have switched to Cyrillc mode.No, it is not easy to change ANSI codepage, it requires a Windows restart. ;) Maybe there's an easier way but I surely don't know about it.

Yes, drop down box would be nice (in the enter message box?) or at least some place in the options for switching codepages.

[JordanB]

Is there a reason that LFS isn't just using unicode? HL2 seems to do it fine ... you can type in any language, see any language (as long as you have the input support/fonts installed).

Though I guess it's due to the way LFS handles text ... I'd strike a wild guess that HL2 just takes advantage of windows 2k+ native unicode support and renders the text to a texture or something.

[Scawen]

Is there a reason that LFS isn't just using unicode? HL2 seems to do it fine ... you can type in any language, see any language (as long as you have the input support/fonts installed).

Though I guess it's due to the way LFS handles text ... I'd strike a wild guess that HL2 just takes advantage of windows 2k+ native unicode support and renders the text to a texture or something.I think if i was coding from scratch i would use unicode. But at the moment, there are around 2000 parts of the program that handle text, buffers in the program, multiplayer packets, text manipulations etc, and these would all need to be modified (most would be easy but some tough - and the easy ones would be a few minutes each). I can't just switch to unicode versions across the board, every instance would need to be checked.

It would be impossible to make a compatible version, because 2-byte characters are just not compatible with 1-byte characters, so a unicode version would need to be a totally new version of LFS. The changes are so huge that there would a few weeks of changeover, during which time i couldn't even compile the program for testing.

There would be a great benefit, that Chinese / Japanese / Korean characters could be supported, but this in turn brings up some issues with text needing to be stored in temporary buffers (an entire Chinese font in texture memory is not practical).

And, there are issues trying to support older versions of Windows which do not have unicode text inputs support - in fact only Windows 2000 and Windows XP have this.

So......... with all these issues, it seemed like a full unicode system, if it will be done ever, would be best left for some future version of LFS, which runs only on Windows XP or later, so it can actually support unicode, and DirectX 9 or whatever, which may have very fast text renders so no need for the temporary buffers, etc...

[Scawen]

Thanks for the bug reports and improvement suggestions!

Patch P4... http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=28002#post28002