problems with Cyrillic input on Windows standalone

[Devin Asay]

On Jan 27, 2009, at 6:05 PM, Curt Ford wrote:

> Hi Devin & others,
>
> It sounds like your suggestion is a good one for when the user should
> definitely type in Russian, or another language the project might plan
> for. In an ideal world (!), I'd like my project to work with any
> language the user's computer supports, and it's OK if they need to
> switch the input method themselves.

And that's expected behavior. Rev normally depends on the OS to tell  
it what input method, and therefore an appropriate font, to use for  
the current chunk of text. Note that when you start typing in a non- 
Latin font, it is the textFont of the *chunk* of text that gets set,  
not the textFont for the field. I can't recall ever having to  
explicitly set the textFont for typing Unicode text, as long as I've  
correctly selected the input method from the OS. Granted, I do most of  
my work on OS X, so maybe just haven't run into your Windows problem  
because of infrequency of use.
>
>
> I've been experimenting with another sample stack; the results seem to
> be that for success, the textFont of the stack needs to be empty, and
> the textFont of the field needs to be Arial.

Again, I'm not sure this needs to be set at all, generally the input  
method chosen will change to an appropriate unicode font--one that  
contains the range of characters needed for the chosen language.
>
>
> In my main project the plot thickens - there are two (of nine) cards
> where users might enter text. One card has fields where they enter
> info to create a word list; the other has a dictation exercise. Last
> week neither was accepting Cyrillic in the Windows standalone.
>
> This morning I set the textFont of the stack to empty, which helped
> some: the word list screen started accepting Cyrillic again, the
> dictation exercise still doesn't.
>
> A further wrinkle: if I open the Windows standalone and go directly
> from the main menu (first) card to the word list card, Cyrillic works;
> but if I go to any other card, then back to the main menu, and then to
> the word list card, the word list shows the same problems with
> Cyrillic as the dictation card. I'm looking for something in card
> scripts of the other cards that could cause this but haven't found
> anything likely. Each card does have a preOpenCard handler that calls
> this stack script:
>
> on ChangeFontsForWindows
> if the platform = "Win32" then
>  repeat with i = the num of fields of this card
>   set the textFont of fld i to "Arial"
>  end repeat
> end if
> end ChangeFontsForWindows
>
> ..but since that's in the word list card too, I don't think it's the
> culprit.

Does the problem still happen if you don't do any font setting at all?  
And you said this only happens in Windows standalones, right? Does it  
happen in any version of Windows on any machine? Does it happen in  
Windows in the IDE? Does it happen if you build with, say, Rev 2.9?
>
>
> I'd hoped to figure this out without going to a consultant but the
> time I have for this issue is running out.. any ideas what else I
> could look at?

Hmmm. I'm starting to wonder if it's a bug with Rev 3 on Windows. I'd  
be willing to take a look at it if you want to send it to me or give  
me a download link offline.

Devin


Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University