International Features of Windows 2000

International Features of Windows 2000

Windows 2000 has a range of multilingual features that make it very useful for anyone involved with more than one language.  This page will explain some of those features, with a particular interest in Asian and Middle-Eastern languages.

Features already available in NT4

Before describing Windows 2000 features, let's review what is available in Windows NT4.0.

NT4 has a Unicode code-base, which means that it can support more than one language.  With Asian support, for instance, you can display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean data on English Window NT4.0. With the addition of the appropriate Input Method Editor (IME), you can also enter data in these languages.

Using Notepad With the appropriate fonts, you can display and edit almost any language except bi-directional language (Arabic, Hebrew).  Notepad also offers the option to save data as Unicode (UCS2).  

Major new features in Windows 2000 Windows 2000 offers a wide variety of language features that will be helpful to the internationalization industry. Some of these features are:

1. Single executable
2. Full Unicode support
3. Ability to select language per-thread
4. Multilingual documents can contain mixtures of Asian, European, and Middle-East languages
5. Selectable user interface language
6. Ability to change user interface language without rebooting
7. Multilingual and Unicode enhancements to Notepad
8. Other features

These two items are not really features, but they make everything else work.  

In Windows NT 4.0 it is possible to change the locale using the regional setttings applet in the control panel.  Then you need to reboot, and your workstation has the new locale.

Windows 2000 lets you change the locale for each thread, without needing to reboot.  This has some major benefits that may not be obvious at first thought:

• It means you can write a program to run on any version of Windows 2000, but run as if it were on a different version of Windows, such as Arabic or Chinese.
• You can use the user interface language of your choice, but execute programs in some other language for test purposes.

Documents containing different language groups, fonts, and even directionality can be combined in the same file. 

Other features

DriversWindows 2000 is much more up-to-date than NT, so it accepts most Windows 98 Plug-and-Play devices.
You can even play DVD movies on Windows 2000, which you can't do on NT 4.0.

Notepad

• UCS2 "big-endian"
• UCS2 "little-endian"
• UTF-8

But then you get this warning, that you will lose data if you try to save it as ANSI (take my word for it):

Then you get the option to save it four ways:

This is the handiest Unicode converter I have seen, by far.

Hint: whenever you create documents that stand any chance of containing different character sets, simply save them as UTF-8.  This page is in UTF-8, as you can see by looking at the header.  That lets me type 日本語 and not worry about it being misinterpreted (but you need to have a Unicode font on your machine to see it correctly).

Let's start with the regional options applet.  In the control panel, click on the globe:

This will bring up the following dialog box:

In this installation, there is support for Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, and by default Western Europe.  Additional languages can be added by checking the appropriate boxes, after which Windows will load the fonts from the Windows 2000 CD.

For this installation the only choice for Menus and dialogs is English (more about this later).

We can add input locales, such as the Japanese input method editor (IME).  Just select the Input Locales tab and add the appropriate IME.

Here are the various settings for the Japanese IME2000:

Hot-switching of user interface language

Why bother switching UI language?

Although we can do a lot with Japanese and Arabic text with this support installed, there are some things we can't do.  For instance, many programs will not display Japanese data correctly, because they use the MS Sans Serif as their font.  This is a sin of commission - the program actually specifies something incompatible with Japanese text.

Another type of problem is a sin of omission: the font settings do not allow for the script parameter.  So you can specify MS Mincho as a font, but the script will default to Western.

Even Adobe Photoshop, a very sophistocated program which advertises that it can handle double-byte characters, will not allow you to enter Chinese data on an English machine, even with Chinese support.  For instance, try pasting the text for the Ficorp Chinese home button, and you will see blanks instead of Chinese characters.

This can be very frustrating, but there is a solution.  You need to set your system default language to Chinese.  Read on...

The Mulitlanguage pack is not a separate installation.  Instead it is something you add on to your existing installation, allowing user interfaces in different languages.

Question: So why would you want to use the Multilanguage pack when regular Windows 2000 handles other languages so well?

Answer: Because the Mulitlanguage pack lets you set the user interface and the system default language to any of the available languages.

Installing Multilanguage Support

Installation is from the June 2000 Microsoft Developers' Network (MSDN) holographic CD labeled "Microsoft Windows 2000 MultiLanguage Version". It is also called Disk 11.

, you will see the following dialog :

Let's assume you want to install all the Asian support plus some European languages.  Specify as many as you need, and they will be installed one by one:

Setting up a user for another language

There are basically two ways to use these new capabilities.  One is to set up a user with another user interface default, and use the "Run as" functinality.

For example, set up a Japanese user.  Either select Manage by right-clicking on My computer, or select Users and Passwords from the control panel.  Then select New user.

Then log in as the Japanese user, and set the regional settings as follows:

You need to know the Japanese names for various languages.  The double-boxes of the word "Nihongo" are easy to spot as Japanese.  If you need help, check out the Japanese glossary on Disk 1 of the Microsoft Developer's Network.

Also set the input locale as Japanese.  You dont need to reboot, but you will need to log off and back on.

Run-as Japanese

Now log back into your default language.

If you want to run a program in Japanese, simply shift-right-click on the icon and select "Run as..."

You are now running as if that program had a Japanese user interface, even though you're in English Windows.

For instance, running Notepad as Japanese looks like:

...

Not only does the program come up in Japanese, but even the help is in Japanese.  Remember, this is done in English Windows.

Change the System Default Language

If you still can't get your program to look Japanese, you may need to set the system default language to Japanese.  In this case it doesn't matter who the user is, since you will be defaulting for all users.

In the regional settings dialog, click the "Set default for all users" box:

At this point you are running the equivalent of Japanese Windows 2000, except that the registry and some other system files are left in English.

The advantages are obvious, but the most obvious is that you can almost forget about multibooting.  The only time you will need to run Japanese Windows NT 4.0 (or Windows 98) is during actual validation testing on those platforms.  The rest of the time you can debug and test on your single Windows 2000 platform, and expect the same results.

Hot Links

This page is still under construction, but there are some good articles on Windows 2000 available from Microsoft. Here are some links to try.

Microsoft White Paper on Multilanguage Support. This is a Word document that you can download from the Microsoft Web site.

Multibooting with Windows 2000

Ficorp's home page

You don't need to be a Microsoft fan to like Windows 2000. On the basis of its international features alone it is a true winner.