International Versions

We normally develop software on machines configured to run English

language versions of Windows. There are one or two issues if you

are using the software under different versions of Windows or with different

languages activated.

Languages and Character Sets

Most of the characters we use come from the ASCII character set and these

are normally consistent whatever code page is used (a code page is used

to map special language specific characters to the upper 126 characters

of an 8-bit ANSI character set). However, we have used a few characters

found in the Latin-1 code page to simulate some of the mathematical symbols

on the keypad. If you use a code page other than Latin-1 (for example

Hebrew, Greek or Eastern European) some or all of these characters are

not available, regardless of whether they exist in the currently selected

font.

We have two solutions to this. Depending on the code page you

are using, the software will change button legends to use available characters.

This may mean that the legends for the multiply and divide buttons or some

of the exponential functions may not exactly match the documentation.

For example the square root button may be labelled "sqrt".

Sometimes, despite the use of a non-Latin-1 codepage, the correct characters are available.

In this case you can override this behaviour to force

Calc98 to use symbol legends,

by checking "Use Symbols" in the setup pages for the main keypad and for the

function keypad.

This particular check box will only be visible for codepages other than Latin-1.

A second solution is to use a version of Calc98 which supports Unicode.

The Unicode character set removes the problem of mapping code pages

by having a very large multilingual character set.

We have a Unicode

version for Windows, but Unicode is only supported on WindowsNT (4 and

higher), Windows2000 and WindowsXP. It is not supported on

Windows95, 98 or ME. All the versions for WindowsCE (Pocket PC)

devices use Unicode also.

If your operating system supports Unicode you

can use the Unicode version of the software. You should then be able

to see all the correct button legends regardless of your language settings

provided your fonts contain the appropriate glyphs. You may need

to select an appropriate font, e.g. Arial, for the keypads using the Options/View

tab.

Unfortunately, even if you use Unicode, it is still possible to have problems.

Not all software supports Unicode properly and sometimes either the software

or a language support utility map different character glyphs to the character

positions corresponding to the upper 126 ANSI characters

according to an ANSI codepage, even though Unicode is being used.

Or a utility may simply install a font with non-Unicode glyphs

substituted directly into the font positions according to the desired ANSI codepage.

This may make applications which do not support Unicode properly appear

to work correctly, but also breaks the Unicode mechanism,

because the Unicode characters which would normally occupy these positions

are no longer accessible.

If the Unicode character mapping has been broken in this way,

you will get local characters instead of some or all of the multiply, divide, power and

root symbols. You can get

Calc98 to use substitute button legends, as on systems with ANSI codepage mapping,

by unchecking "Use Symbols" in the setup pages for the main keypad and for the

function keypad.

This particular check box will only be visible for codepages other than Latin-1.

Decimal and thousands separator symbols

You can change the decimal point character from the Options/Display tab.

When the software is first run, it takes a default value for the decimal

character depending on your locale. Subsequently it will retain

whatever value you set it to. If you have previously run the software

(including an earlier version) the value for the decimal character will

be retained from this earlier version (from the registry). This may

mean that you have to set the value manually.

The thousands separator can also be selected in the same way, but by

default it is set to "none" so that there is no digit grouping.