Rob,
my suggestions to improve the documentation are below. If you think that
this information is *explicitly* found in the existing documentation, I
would be glad if you could post the particular excerpt here (maybe I just
missed them). :-)
(1) wix.chm shall contain a note how to author a .wxl file for the neutral
culture (WixLocalization/@Culture="" using an *empty* string).
(2) wix.chm shall contain a note that a .msi file will *ever* only contain
exactly *one* culture ("It is impossible to author a .msi file containing
more than one culture."), which is the one defined in the .wxs file using
*Product/@Language*. Also it shall be noted that light.exe's -cultures
option has no influence on this.
(3) wix.chm shall contain a note that the *sole* use of light.exe's
-cultures option is to tell light.exe the *fallback sequence* of cultures to
link into the .wsi. It shall be clearly noted that the -cultures option does
*not* tell the target computer's Windows Installer which language is
contained in the .msi file (see (2) and (4)).
(4) wix.chm shall contain a note that the target computer's Windows
Installer doesn't care for the culture contained in the .msi at all, since
e. g. a German target computer will install an Italian .msi file. *The
culture defined in the .wxs / .msi file, is purely informative and has no
impact on any technical outcome.*
(4) It shall contain a note that light.exe makes no difference between comma
and semicolon: *All* provided cultures are specifying the fallback sequence
for light.exe, *independent* of the used separation character. *Only* Votive
will make such a difference.
(5) It shall contain a note what light.exe will do when *no* -culture option
is provided.
Using these five improvements I think it will be clear to beginners what the
cultures stuff is good for and how it works like. Would be glad to find it
contained in the next release of WiX (which, BTW, is a great product but
"just" expects people to be MSI experts to use it *correctly*). :-)
Regards
Markus
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Mensching [mailto:r...@robmensching.com]
Sent: Samstag, 24. Oktober 2009 23:24
To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Beginner's Question on Multi Language Installer
There is an entire page dedicated to this topic in the WiX.chm called
"Specifying Cultures to Build". Can you provide suggestions as to what is
not clear?
On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 5:02 AM, Markus Karg <markus.k...@gmx.net> wrote:
> Thank you for this explanation. I wish this would be told in this clarity
> in
> the WiX documentation.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Blair [mailto:os...@live.com]
> Sent: Donnerstag, 22. Oktober 2009 02:25
> To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.'
> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Beginner's Question on Multi Language Installer
>
> Depending on where you read the information, different things come into
> play.
>
> In Votive (or anywhere else you are using the msbuild support), if you
> supply the string "de,en;en" for the cultures setting (I don't remember
the
> casing or exact spelling of the property), you will get two MSIs built:
one
> that uses German with English fallback (for any missing German strings)
and
> English. Votive will call light.exe two times.
>
> In the light.exe command-line snipits as you list them below, in that
third
> example, you get German, falling back to English, falling back to English.
> In other words, there is no real difference at all between the three
> command-lines.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Markus KARG [mailto:markus.k...@gmx.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 11:09 AM
> To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.'
> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Beginner's Question on Multi Language Installer
>
> Blair,
>
> but what is the difference then between:
>
> -culture:de,en
> -culture:de;en
> -culture:de,en;en
>
> ???
>
> Thanks
> Markus
>
> > It looks for the strings in all of the .wxl files sorting them in order
> > of
> > Culture, based on the order of the -Cultures parameter followed by the
> > order
> > the wxl files appear in the commandline.
> >
> > Example without using cultures, but placing the wxl files in numbered
> > order:
> >
> > One.wxl:
> > ...<String Id="one">This is the override</String>...
> >
> > Two.wxl:
> > ...<String Id="one">This is an override</String>...
> > ...<String Id="two">This is the second</String>...
> > ...<String Id="four">This is the fourth</String>...
> >
> > Three.wxl:
> > ...<String Id="one">This is the original</String>...
> > ...<String Id="two">This is another one</String>...
> > ...<String Id="three">And yet another one</String>...
> >
> > Then:
> > <Property Id="ONE" Value="!(loc.one)"/>
> > <Property Id="TWO" Value="!(loc.two)"/>
> > <Property Id="THREE" Value="!(loc.three)"/>
> > <Property Id="FOUR" Value="!(loc.four)"/>
> >
> > Results:
> > ONE: This is the override
> > TWO: This is the second
> > THREE: And yet another one
> > FOUR: This is the fourth
> >
> > If each of the above .wxl files had a culture of "en-US" and you added
> > a
> > fourth .wxl file with a culture of "en-HK" containing the following:
> > ...<String Id="one">Welcome to Hong Kong</String>...
> > ...<String Id="three">Please come again</String>...
> >
> > And then rebuilt using a -Cultures:en-HK,en-US parameter
> >
> > Results:
> > ONE: Welcome to Hong Kong
> > TWO: This is the second
> > THREE: Please come again
> > FOUR: This is the fourth
> >
> > In other words, in culture-order, search each WXL that exactly matches
> > that
> > culture until you find a matching string.
> >
> > Any given single MSI in the end understands just one "language", based
> > on
> > the ProductLanguage tag (comes from produ...@language) and the content
> > (a
> > single value for each and every string). Everything else we do is
> > intended
> > to change that MSI's content so that a different language becomes
> > apparent.
> > That is where we re-link with different languages in order to generate
> > the
> > transforms that set our base MSI to those different languages. At that
> > point, you can vary just the Cultures parameter and all WXL files that
> > don't
> > match the culture are ignored, so the command-line variation between
> > the
> > different links is minimal and easily controlled for.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Markus KARG [mailto:markus.k...@gmx.net]
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 3:01 PM
> > To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.'
> > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Beginner's Question on Multi Language
> > Installer
> >
> > Blair,
> >
> > thank you for your kind help.
> >
> > To sum up, multi-language support actually (or: "officially") is not
> > possible with a single .msi (or at least, not without either patching
> > or
> > transforming it before installation).
> >
> > What I do not understand under this circumstances is: Why can I add a
> > LIST
> > of cultures to light.exe? I mean, what does it actually do with all the
> > cultures if actually always taking just the first in the list?
> >
> > Thanks
> > Markus
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Blair [mailto:os...@live.com]
> > > Sent: Dienstag, 20. Oktober 2009 21:53
> > > To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.'
> > > Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Beginner's Question on Multi Language
> > > Installer
> > >
> > > You get German since that is the first one in your list of Cultures.
> > >
> > > MSI has never officially supported the scenario you describe
> > directly.
> > > You
> > > are perfectly free to create per-language transforms and use an .EXE
> > > file to
> > > install your MSI with those transforms (the supported way). There are
> > > some
> > > who have had success with embedding those same transforms based on a
> > > particular naming convention and having them auto-selected by the OS
> > > (not
> > > supported, but I'm told it works). There may or may not be issues
> > with
> > > generating working MSP files if you use those transforms (you may
> > have
> > > to
> > > mess with the transform applicability rules of the patch-supplied
> > > transforms
> > > depending on what the original language transforms did).
> > >
> > > You may be able to use the instance transform related tags in WiX,
> > but
> > > I
> > > have never tried that so I don't know what gotchas you may find that
> > > way.
> > > Otherwise you may be able to link each language separately into
> > .wixout
> > > files, generate your transforms from those, and bind the "baseline"
> > > wixout
> > > into the MSI you subsequently apply each MST to.
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Markus KARG [mailto:markus.k...@gmx.net]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 12:06 PM
> > > To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> > > Subject: [WiX-users] Beginner's Question on Multi Language Installer
> > >
> > > Hello Everybody,
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I am new to both, MSI technology in general and the WiX product in
> > > particular, but I have some experience with some old InstallShield
> > > products
> > > (pre-MSI-age).
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > InstallShield allowed me to simply add translated strings for lots of
> > > languages, so one single setup.exe contained the installer in multi
> > > languages. This was very smart since I was able to send the same
> > > setup.exe
> > > to any country of the world.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Now I want to write an installer with WiX that is also multi language
> > > (I
> > > don't want to have lots of setup.msi files, but only a single one).
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I wrote several .wxl files and linked them together using a line like
> > > this
> > > one:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > light.exe -cultures:de,neutral;fr,neutral;en,neutral;neutral -loc
> > > de.wxl
> > > -loc fr.wxl -loc en.wxl -loc neutral.wxl Setup.wixobj
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > (While actually told nowhere, it seems that neutral.wxl must contain
> > '
> > > .culture="". ' [i. e. empty string] to indicate that it is the
> > neutral
> > > culture. I found out that by trial and error when adding the neutral
> > > fallback to each culture).
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > What I expect to get from light.exe is one single .msi file
> > containing
> > > all
> > > four language packs: German, French, English and Neutral. Light
> > > provides a
> > > single .msi so "from the outside" it seems to work.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > My target is that the Windows Installer at install time picks German,
> > > French
> > > or English strings automatically, depending on the user's current
> > > "Region
> > > and Language Settings" or instead picks neutral strings when the
> > > current
> > > user's local setting is neither German, French nor English (for
> > > example,
> > > "Polish" / "Poland").
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > While light v3 accepts the above line and does not complain in any
> > way
> > > (not
> > > even ICE warnings), the Windows Installer picks Germany *always* when
> > > running the resulting .msi file on my laptop -- despite the current
> > > setting
> > > of "Polish" / "Poland" in the "Region and Language Settings" control
> > > panel.
> > > :-(
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Can anybody tell me what my fault is?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > Markus
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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