MultiLex 4.0 R/E & E/R dictionaries

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Harald Hille wrote:

> Dear Seelangers,
>   I asked a friend in Moscow to buy the latest version of the
> MediaLingua dictionaries, MultiLex 4.0, for installation on my PC (US
> Windows 2000).  She sent it to me through another friend along with a
> kvitancia and other proofs of purchase.  However, my attempts to
> install it have failed as the dialogue boxes, which tell you what
> information should be entered where and when during the installation
> process display a kind of gibberish - lots of question marks in some
> places and accented Latin vowels and other letters, not Cyrillic in
> others.  I get similar "code" with some e-mail messages that have not
> been properly decoded.  Somehow, I gather I have to get my Windows
> 2000 operating system to display Cyrillic rather than the undecoded
> gibberish.  Is it impossible for my O/S to use the Moscow-bought
> version of the program?  Do I need a Russian version of Windows 2000?
> Harald Hille

I doubt that this is the fault of Windows 2000, which is quite happy to
display Cyrillic when it's told properly. My guess is that your program
doesn't specify any particular code page, it just assumes that it will
be installed on a Russian system with Cyrillic default, but your system
has Western default and hasn't been told to do anything different by the
program.

Tim Sergay's advice to go to Fingertip or Ernest Sjogren's advice to go
to Pavel Gorodyansky's site should both work.

The shortest, simplest thing you can do is this, and it might solve your
problem easily:

Start | Settings | Control Panel | Regional Options

"General" tab, under "Language settings for the system," scroll down the
list and see if "Cyrillic" is checked. If not, check it. OK out.

If the system offers you the option of inserting your installation disk
or reading from the cabinet files on your hard disk, the cab files will
be quicker and easier. If it asks you to reboot, go ahead.

If that doesn't solve the problem, use the same mechanism to set
Cyrillic as default (you'll see a button at the lower left in the same
dialog) and *that* should solve it. The bonus of doing it this way is
that Russian title bars will show up in Cyrillic, and you'll also get a
Russian keyboard that you can toggle on and off with left ALT+SHIFT.

You don't have to do these two steps separately -- if you want, you can
do both in one pass.

In either event, it should take no more than five minutes.

The email issue is separate -- usually it's because some email messages
are malformed by the sender and your program must be told manually to
use a Cyrillic encoding to display them. Other factors can come into
play, too, but that's a separate thread.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------