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About project language settings

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The language settings for your project in Configuration > Common Properties > Language Settings control how texts with international languages and character sets are handled in your output. If you work in English or any other Western European language you should not need to change the default settings, but in other languages you will need to adjust the settings to avoid font display problems in your published output.

Language of the Help File:

This sets the language code of your project. On its own this setting does not actually affect how characters are displayed, it only identifies the language to the system and controls how sorting is handled in the Keyword Index and everywhere else where sorting is used.

Setting for English and other Western European Languages:

The default setting is English (United States) and if you are using English or any other Western European language you don't need to change this. In fact, it's better if you don't because if you do you may experience a known problem in your HTML Help output: On some users' computers the title bar of your help will sometimes display "HTML Help" instead of the title of your help project. Setting this option to English (United States) will prevent this problem.

Setting for other languages:

If you are using languages with special character sets or Unicode character sets like Eastern European languages, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese or Thai you must change this setting to the language you are using. In these languages this setting makes sure that sorting works correctly. In addition to this it also identifies the language to the system so that special characters and Unicode processing (if necessary) are handled correctly for the language.

In addition to this you must also change the Font Character Set setting (see below) to the correct character set for your language. In these languages both these settings must set to the correct values for the language you are using for the language to be handled properly in your output.

Bi-directional Language Mode:

This is used to switch Help+Manual's writing mode to right-to-left for languages like Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi. The setting makes radical changes to the way Help+Manual operates, switching the writing direction of the TOC and all text in both the program itself and all output formats.

Don't change the default setting unless you are using one of these languages! Please also note that right-to-left languages are only supported in HTML Help, you cannot publish help in other formats in these languages.

Font character set:

This is the setting that really controls how international characters are displayed on the user's computer, because it defines the character set containing the characters to be displayed.

Setting for English and other Western European Languages:

The default setting is ANSI_CHARSET and this character set contains all the characters required for English and all other Western European languages. If you are using any of these languages you do not need to change this, and you shouldn't! For example, if you change it to DEFAULT_CHARSET or any other value you may experience display problems with special characters in your output.

Setting for other languages:

If you are using languages with special character sets or Unicode character sets like Eastern European languages, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese or Thai you must set the correct character set for the language you are using to ensure that all characters are handled correctly in your output.

In addition to this you must also change the Language of the Help File setting (see above) to ensure correct sorting and to identify the language you are using to the system. In all these languages both these settings must set to the correct values for the language you are using to be handled properly in your output.

The Default Font setting:

This setting is only relevant for HTML Help (CHM). Despite its rather misleading name, which was chosen by Microsoft, it does not set the default font for your entire project. It only sets the font for the Table of Contents (TOC) and dialog boxes displayed in CHM files.

Setting for English and Western European languages

The default setting for this is MS Sans Serif,8,0 and the HTML Help viewer is designed for the size of letters generated by this font at this setting. It is thus generally advisable to leave the setting as it is for English and Western European languages. If you do change it you should test your published help thoroughly on as many versions of Windows as you can and with Windows set to both regular and large fonts to make sure that everything fits.

Languages with special character sets

It may be necessary to choose other fonts for languages with special character sets, including Eastern European languages, Greek, Turkish and Asian languages. In these cases you may need to experiment a little until you find a font that produces satisfactory results.

You should always use a standard font included with Windows in these languages, however, otherwise the font may not be available on your users' systems when the help is displayed.

See also:

Language Settings

International Languages Setup