How change default language mode in revEnterprise?

[Maciej]

I want to use diacritical character (the Polish language) in stack's name, fields, text are etc. revEnterprise always change my keyboard to EN. It is very, very annoying.
OK, I can change keyboard from EN to PL, but I had to do it in EVERY place.
Next problem. I set stack title f.e. 'Przykład' (Polish: example) and I see 'PrzykBad' (with default MS Sans Serif font)
And the next one: I make stack with text field and compile it, next I run it. And I still cannot use Polish character (with right ALT+letter), keyboard setting changing automatically from PL to EN. WTF?
Could explain me, step by step, how PERMANENTLY set revEnterprise to using Polish, German, Russian etc. diacritical character?

Maciej, Poland

PS I'm looking for Polish users RunRev products.

[Mark]

Maciej,

I fully agree with you. This is often a big problem and I consider this a bug that should have been fixed a long time ago.

Depending on the type of application you are creating, you might try setting the font of a text field to "Lucida Grande,Polish" on Mac and "Arial,Polish" on Windows (without the quotes).

Best,

Mark

[Maciej]

I've got a half-solution from runRev - solution for blocked right ALT+letter. My source of troubles is keyboard shortcut (why are not user-defined?) in runRevolution. I had to turn of Control+ALT click for edit script in Preferences.
But I still must set Polish for every element.
I am stupid and believe me - I don't know why I didn't check it before purchase. Everything, but not this.
Now I am afraid of runRev update policy. When this disadvantage will be removed, probably it will be connected with an extra payment. BTW I don't understand update policy. Big upgrade - OK, I can pay for it, like in other companies. But pay for debugging? I think abut revEnterprise Early Software Assurance Pack:

The revEnterprise Early Update Pack entitles you to a full year of updates to your revEnterprise product. This means you will be able to download and unlock every new release of revEnterprise during your license period, giving you access to new features, improvements and bug fixes as they happen.

Dear runRev... Bug fixes? I must to pay for bug fixes? It is a joke?

OK. I'm waiting for solution.

Maciej

[Mark]

Hi Maciej,

I understand your reaction. It is undeed strange that one would have to pay for bug fixes. I am ambivalent, because on the one hand one often gets new features with any update, while on the other hand critical bugs (such as unicode-related bugs) are still not fixed after many years.

It would probably be best to buy RunRev for what it currently has to offer, rather than what it might offer at some point in the future. If the current feature set is sufficient and you can live with the bugs, it might be advantageous to buy an early update pack. Otherwise, you might want to check back again in 2 years to see whether the product has improved. Buying a license every 2 years is approximately as expensive as buying an update every year.

Best,

Mark

[FourthWorld]

Dear runRev... Bug fixes? I must to pay for bug fixes? It is a joke?

It's no joke. It's called viability.

http://revjournal.com/blog.irv?pid=1268596413.033323

[Maciej]

You are wrong, I'm afraid... You are trying to excuse this policy with viability. IMHO this is wrong way. I use a lot of software, where bugs and minor new innovations are free. For example Sony Vegas Pro. Main upgrade of course, not. If company needs more money, should make bigger community. Believe me, I'm very satisfied from quality of support, contact with runRev, , lesson, dictionary etc., but this update policy is not user friendly. And in crisis time Europe would be good place for bussiness. But ALL Europe? RunRev begins iPhone and smartphone project - I'd like to remind, we (Eastern and Middle-Europeans) use a lot of it, too. But with our native language. I can use English mp3 players, video, gadgets, but not text- or database- based software. Of course I can use it, runRev use Unicode. But probably will be better, faster and cheaper to use f.e. Delphi, with thousands of free libraries.
I choose runRev, because I'm not professional developer, but I need from time to time a small and unique tools.

OK, stop, this is out of topic, so back to the main question.
Who can help me? Any trick? Maybe is possibly to safely hack runRev binary file? I know, license, but it is not important for me at this moment.
Lithuanians, Russian, German and other nations with diacritical characters - how do you solving problems with your native language and comfortable works in runRev enviroment?

Maciej

[BvG]

German and french diacriticals are included in the default encodings, which are based on microsofts ISO 8859-1 and Apples mac os roman. Polish however is not, because it's part of the eastern european extended ascii charset (together with greek, russian, etc.). This is all because of historical, pre-Unicode reasons. I can fully understand that this information is not helpful at all, but at least it gives reasons.

Maybe using the metacard IDE can help with the shortcut problem? As for working around the issues with encoding... no idea.

[FourthWorld]

You are wrong, I'm afraid... You are trying to excuse this policy with viability. IMHO this is wrong way. I use a lot of software, where bugs and minor new innovations are free. For example Sony Vegas Pro. Main upgrade of course, not.

Precisely.

Sony issues major upgrades for Vegas annually, as is common across the industry. Between major upgrades they release bug-fix updates for free. But once they ship a major upgrade they usually stop working on older versions, as appears to be the case with Sony Vegas as well, so if you don't pay them every year you stop getting bug fixes.

With Rev you get both bug fixes AND new features for one year after purchase. As with Sony Vegas, if you want more bug fixes in the following year you'll need to upgrade your license.

So the main difference between RunRev and Sony is that RunRev doesn't hold significant features back for a year, instead rolling those out to all current customers along with bug fixes throughout the annual license period.

Sure, it's uncommon in the industry to see a vendor not withhold features for a year, and this isn't the first time that this unusually liberal upgrade policy has been misunderstood.

But uncommon as it is, it adds equally uncommon value to the workflow in at least two ways:

- It simplifies work on the code base, so the vendor doesn't need to maintain two different code bases in which they only fix bugs in one while fixing bugs and adding features in another.

- It delivers significant new features to their audience faster, since those features aren't being withheld for a year.

As agile methods become more popular I expect to see more software vendors adopt similar release patterns. It simply provides more value at every step in the chain, for themselves, their investors, and their customers alike.

[FourthWorld]

Maybe using the metacard IDE can help with the shortcut problem? As for working around the issues with encoding... no idea.

In this case I don't think so since both IDEs rely on the same engine, for which Unicode support is currently only partially implemented.

I believe RunRev CEO Kevin Miller has said publicly that more complete Unicode support is in development, and while I'm not at liberty to discuss details or timelines I can say that his sharing of the team's internal roadmap for the engine on the Enterprise discussion list shows Unicode playing an ever more central role in the future.

In the meantime, these notes from Devin Assay at BYU are invaluable for getting started with Unicode in Rev:
http://revolution.byu.edu/unicode/unicodeInRev.php

There's a section there on using Unicode in stack titles which makes reference to the unicodeTitle property:

Code: Select all

set the unicodeTitle of this stack to the unicodeText of fld "russTitle"

Maciej, when you're setting your stack's title are you setting the "title" property or the "unicodeTitle" property?

[Maciej]

In main stack script, but - for tests use methode descibet in docs with button. And it works, letters in Title are changed, but still are wrong. I try everything this evening or tommorow again, step by step. Maybe I do something wrong.

Code: Select all

With Rev you get both bug fixes AND new features for one year after purchase. As with Sony Vegas, if you want more bug fixes in the following year you'll need to upgrade your license.

Wait a minute. Or I cannot read, or I don't uderstand this rules. With licence key I've got information like this: " Valid for version 4.0.0 and any new revEnterprise release made within the three months from..."
It means, if bug fixes will be included AFTER three months (not one year!) I should pay. And if I undestand this wrong, read next: " If you want to keep your license up to date then you can purchase a yearly update pack. This will allow you to download and activate every new release of Revolution Enterprise for a whole year from the date of purchase of your pack."

Not year. Three months.

[FourthWorld]

Indeed it is. My apologies. It's been more than a decade since I bought my first license, and after checking this with RunRev it does seem to be the case they have changed their policy so that the the first license period is only three months. I disagree with this change, and made that quite clear to them.

All subsequent renewal work as I described.

[Maciej]

I give up. Yes, using, of course, using non-English characters in Revolution is possible. And generally - it works.
But have you even tray find something in your left pocket with your right hand? If I want to use non-English characters in ANY other tools - MMBuilder, Neobook etc. or Delphi, VisualBasic, I just write. In the field, in the label. In my standard, current codepage, just type in the right field or in code. In Revolution - not. Every step is a jumping through the hoops.
It is wasting my time. Of course I can wait for REAL, user friendly and simply working with eastern languages. But for now it buying Revolution is mistake.
Unfortunately, runRev work now and promote revMobile, and I'm afraid Polish, Russian and others users from this region are not very important at this moment And probably I will be wait for solution long, long time.

So, I lost money, I learned check everything twice (or more) before buying something.

Maciej

[FourthWorld]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't find in your post where you'd mentioned whether or not you used the UnicodeTitle property. It would seem that would do what you need and require just one line as would setting the Title property.

Yes, having been originally architected before Unicode was invented, Rev's current focus on the ISO 8859-1 character set does mean that some things involving other character sets will take a little more effort to handle. The folks at RunRev Ltd. have expressed that they're revising the Rev engine to integrate Unicode more deeply throughout the engine, but as you can imagine this is a non-trivial task which will take some time.

In the meantime, if Rev's strengths are useful enough to your project to outweigh its current weakness with Unicode, it would seem that just changing "title" to "unicodeTitle" in your script would get you back to work moving on to the rest of the things you need to do.

[Maciej]

It is not only 'Title' problem, but annoying works in Revolution environment - changing keyboard in each place etc.
Title's problem is small problem, not very important, but describing work in every place.
How I'd like to work? What is my dream?
1) I start new project with new stack, nothing changes my default keyboard setting. I default is PL, it still should be PL, not EN. If I want type Russian, French etc. then keyboard is changed by ME. Not Revolution.
2) In inspector window is see (for example) 'Title' field. I want to type there in Polish. And I want to see and the same moment correct, Polish letter on title bar, labels.
THE END. I want to much? Works comfortable without an extra scripts, watchings for keyboard settings?

But back to the 'Title' - I try methods described in tutorials and in unicodeInRev.rev file.
1) I put a Polish text (just type in field in inspector) and I've got something like this

Then I copy content of inspector's field to Notepad++ and paste again, and now looks good. Why?


2) I type in stack window:

On title bar and stack field is OK, in inspector - not.

Now I try type Polish characters in inspector and this is effect:




So - of course it is possible to use Polish etc. But this is like writing book in MS Word using for all diacritical characters ALT+code. Possible but not comfortable. This is reason of my frustration. Revolution is promoted as universal, multisystem RAD tool. Maybe, but not (real) multilanguage.

OK. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I do something strange. Maybe I don't understand how use it. Who have free time and can help me here or in private message?

I would like to see small rev file working like this.
1) Stack with Polish title (or Russian or other eastern language, not German or French)
2) Text field where I can type in default Windows language, without changing keyboard.
3) Four buttons (with Polish labels!):
- 1st - copy text from text field to variable or array
- 2nd paste text stored in variable or array in text field or laber field
- 3dt - copy text from text field and save it in txt file
- 4th - read text from file and show it in text field or label.

Text should be save as UTF8 (2bytes only for diacritical, Roman characters should be 1 byte).

Maciej

[FourthWorld]

You're right: the Inspector doesn't handle Unicode as well as the engine. All I can say is that they're working on it, but in the meantime the annoyances you've identified in the current version when working in non-ISO-8859-1 languages will require some patience.