Re: [pcgen] More issues with RC2

Hi William,

 

Thank you for checking, but I'm unclear on what you have confirmed….

 

Are you saying that with Portuguese specific version of Windows Server 2012/2016 that Portuguese (or international) versions of Microsoft Office and other MS softwares all default to A4 without issue; and, when using US/English versions of Windows Server 2012/2016 and US/English or international versions of that the same softwares default to Letter?

 

Or are you saying that in your testing that Portuguese versions of Windows or other MS software is always defaulting to A4?

 

Any discrepancy in the coding of this default setting would be specific to the software. The traditional way is to write the software to be responsive to the locale by querying the default printer's driver to provide the page size setting, and if that fails or there is no default printer installed, to rely on the Windows current culture setting and default to Letter only for US-English and A4 everywhere else. This only happens upon installation and from that point forward it is usually under user control. Long ago, printers used fan-fold perf paper and the setting was even more important than it is today, especially for business forms, invoices, etc. So professional international softwares usually tried to default to the appropriate page size. That standard has endured in most softwares, but perhaps not necessarily in new software; at least not until someone points it out.

 

Mark

 

 

From: main@pcgen.groups.io <main@pcgen.groups.io> On Behalf Of William LaSalle
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 1:00 PM
To: main@pcgen.groups.io
Subject: Re: [pcgen] More issues with RC2

 

I have tested on multiple vm now and a couple of 2012 and 2016 servers in our dc with none of these issues including one server in Portuguese 

 

On Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 1:42 AM markjmeans <markjmeans@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Russell,

 

That's not my experience with German and Dutch OEM editions of Windows when using HP business class printers. (I've built about a dozen systems for a European reseller of mine that were resold to his customers, using Windows 7 and 8). None of my customers reported to me that they had to change the paper size (which I expect would have been the case during the end users initial training since I didn't specifically set any of those properties during the installation). Though to be fair, perhaps a sample size of a dozen nearly identical installations cannot be assumed to be indicative of common experience.

 

In my own testing, I only found issues with paper size in the reverse of what I described when I was testing various localizations of my Windows application in XP. In that testing I used a US/English version of Windows XP and installed the multi-language pack to get the internationalization controls for date formats, number separators, keyboard layouts, etc. rather than installing the German and Dutch specific versions of XP. This was also tested with US/English versions of windows 7 Ultimate which had the ability to add German and Dutch language packs. In those cases, the printer drivers, when installed, defaulted to US/English settings even though the current Windows language was set to German or Dutch. It seems to me that something internal to Windows specified that English was to be used be English was the core OS install. And since I didn't have any A4 paper I never had to change anything. I can only guess that something like that may have happened in your case or perhaps the drivers for your specific printer or the printer's firmware (if the page size settings are held in the printer itself) were not specifically localized to your country. I would also guess that this kind of issue (defaulting to Letter page size even when installed on a EU language OS) would be more likely on lower end printers or lower end printer manufacturers. But without specifically testing an identical setup to yours, I don't have an specific explanation for your experience.

 

That all being said, as you indicated that you can select the printer default in the OS and then the application honored it. This is in fact all I'm asking PCGen to do. Honor the OS specified setting upon installation. But still allow the user to select something else if they wish. PCGen shouldn't be locked to the OS setting. Ideally, PCGen upon first run should be fully functional and localized to whatever the user's OS specifies at the time PCGen is installed as long as PCGen fully supports that localization. The preferences dialogs should not even need to be opened except in special circumstances.

 

Mark

 

 

From: main@pcgen.groups.io <main@pcgen.groups.io> On Behalf Of Russell
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2018 4:42 AM
To: main@pcgen.groups.io
Subject: Re: [pcgen] More issues with RC2

 

Never had an issue with printing, and as a non american, I have never had a single microsoft product select A4 as the correct paper, instead always defaulting to US letter, so it seems harsh to expect different from pcgen. Changing the printer defaults in the OS does seem to do the job most of the time.