Issues with Å, Ä, and Ö (for other users) when coding in VBA - excel

I have a problem coding in another language than English (when the input is in another language). For example, it is important to be able to write "LÅNG" and then use that input for my macros. However, when I have sent this to other computers, the "Å" get distorted and the macro does not work. Is there a way to fix this?
I guess I could write code that translate "Lång" to "Lang" etc., but even the code going is already distorted:/ What to do?
Edit: Code example (words have been edited):
MsgBox "Område saknas" 'free text-an error message prompting user action. This got completely distorted
Dim ColumnProjekt as String
ColumnProjekt = "Höst" . 'This changed when to something difference resulting in many, many errors in my other code.
Select Case Tidshorisont 'this is declared as a string and could contain "Lång"
Case "Lång"

Here is a great article about Unicode, explaining why the umlauts are changed on other computers:
The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
Long story short - it is not a bug and there is no excuse to write code in German, naming variables in German (or in any other language but English). In the documentation, you may write in German (or in any other language).
If the idea is to write the MsgBox() in German, then the correct way to do it in Excel is something like this:
MsgBox tblSettings.Range("C5")
And in tblSettings.Range("C5") write the string. However, if it is opened in a computer, which does not support German as a regional system language (probably about 99% of the world PCs), then the following actions should be carried out by the user:
Clock And Region (search in start menu)
Region (link)
Administrative (tab)
Change system locale (button)
Current System Locale - Germany (drop down)
Or as a workaround - write "Laeng" and relax - it would work.

Related

Internationalization Web Number-Symbols

do I need to use another number-symbols when I want my webpage to be accessible in other countries? According to Microsoft there are different shape of numbers: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/globalization/locale/number-formatting#:~:text=formatting%20for%20details.-,The%20character%20used%20as%20the%20thousands%20separator,thousands%20separator%20is%20a%20space.
I have been searching since a few days to get a clear answer but I cant find some. Also, on most international websites/apps I only ever see the digits 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 although the digits for the language actually look different. That unsettles me. I feel like many websites/apps just ignore this fact. Can anybody help me further? Also do I need to know how to activate foreign symbols in html?
I do not know for sure what language you are translating/typing in HTML. But here is an example of what you can use as a guide to certain scripts in Arabic: https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/languages/mideast/arabic/arabicchart/
You may also need to use a converter. For example, I type Chinese on my website by typing the characters into a character to unicode converter. Then I copy and paste the unicode to my HTML text.

PL/I character set and IBM Personal Communications - wrong characters are displayed

Some characters that I enter in editor displayed not identical to those on keyboard. So I have error messages like this:
Character with decimal value 176 does not belong to the PL/I character
set. It will be ignored.
when trying to compile PL/I programm.
Sometimes character can displayed even properly, but I still have similar error message.
Examples of this characters are character that represents logical OR, logical NOT.
How to solve this problem? Is it a settings of editor, or settings of program IBM Personal Communications? Or may be it is better to enter 16-code of those symbols (how to do that if possible, and how to determine what code I need)?
There is a lot of places where this can go wrong...
The keyboard-driver on your client machine has to be configured correctly for the keyboard you use. But if other programs work correctly and only the mainframe emulation behaves strangely then this should be OK.
The PCOMM-session has to be configured to use the correct Host-codepage. Ask your mainframe technical guys what is used and configure your terminal emulation accordingly. Since we don't use PCOMM I can't help you with this, you will have to look around the session settings a bit.
In PL/I most characters are taken from the range that is identical in most EBCDIC codepages. The main exceptions are the characters for the OR- and NOT-operators which may differ. IBM-default for OR is '4F'X, which is a pipe-character '|' in codepage 1140 (English), but an exclamation mark '!' in codepage 1141 (German). Default for NOT is '5F'X which is a logical NOT-sign '¬' in 1140 but a caret '^' in 1141.
Since these problems are well known the compiler offers two options OR() and NOT() to set the characters to be used for these operators. So you might look in your compile-listing whether these parameters are set in your installation and what their values are since these are the characters you have to use.

What kind of sign is "‎" and what is it used for

What kind of sign is "‎" and what is it used for (note there is a invisible sign there)?
I have searched through all my documents and found a lot of them. They messed upp my htaccess file. I think I got them when I copied webadresses from google to redirect. So maybe a warning searching through your documents for this one also :)
It is U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK. (A quick way to check out such things is to copy a string containing the character and paste it in the writing area in my Full Unicode input utility, then click on the “Show U+” button there, and use Fileformat.Info character search to check out the name and other properties of the character, on the basis of its U+... number.)
The LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK sets the writing direction of directionally neutral characters. It does not affect e.g. English or Arabic words, but it may mess up text that contains parentheses for example – though for text in English, there should be no confusion in this sense.
But, of course, when text is processed programmatically, as when a web server processes a .htaccess file, they are character data and make a big difference.

'modifying' an exe by working with bas using visbasic or q basic

all!
I'm trying to run programs to control stepper motors. The PC and software and stepper motor controller I have already in place are pretty old and I'm new to almost everything I'm doing here-learning as I go sort of thing. I've 'coded' a bit in Matlab, so I have a very basic level of coding logic, but basically no knowledge of any common syntax. So, I know some about the steppers and the stepper controller, but not much else!
I have a program called "Hoop.exe" that I'm trying to modify to slow down the speed of one of the steppers (I just need to change a 300 to a 200!) when I run the program. There is also an associated (assuming) hoop.bas and a hoop.txt file on the floppy disc. From looking at the txt file, it looks like basic code from examples of basic I've seen. I'm working with visual basic 2.0 and qbasic 1.1 on Windows 98.
So, I tried opening the hoop.bas file first with qbasic and with vb. With qb, I get a 'bad file mode' message. With vb, I get 'invalid file format' and it seems it wants me to open a mak file but I have no 'hoop.mak'. I did this thinking that I could open the bas file with vb or qb, and then edit it, and then save it as an exe, and then run that.
I found a pdf that showed how to incorporate a qb file into the command button of vb, and I tried that. But, I got an "Expected: end of statement" error in the first line! when I tried to save it as an exe.
So, all I really want to do is change my hoop.exe. I would assume that since qb and vb are both on the PC, one of them wrote the bas (maybe not!), so I'm wondering why neither of them can read it.
I've never used vb or qb, but if I have to get into the nitty gritty, it seems like I'd rather use qbasic, since I've never used a graphical interface to code before. But, is either one of those necessary in order to do what I want to do? (I'm going to need to write some programs to control these steppers when all is said and done, but I figured that I should take it one step at a time.)
I tried some form of copying and pasting into qb, but I couldn't immediately figure out how to do that. (Probably because I have no idea how to use qb.)
So, what would be the most efficient way to modify my hoop program?
If the answer is that I just need to learn basic with qb, that's fine, but I'd like to get some sort of indication from people who know what they're talking about before I put that much effort in.
I would really appreciate any pointers because I'm apparently completely clueless on my own!
8/10/2013:
Just in case it's helpful, here are some lines from the Hoop.txt I opened:
10 CLS : CLEAR 1000: P = 512
20 LOCATE , , 1
100 A% = INKEY$: PRINT A$;
105 IF A$ = "*" THEN GOTO 700
110 GOSUB 510: GOSUB 610: GOTO 100
500 REM
510 IF A$ = "" THEN RETURN
etc. This is the beginning of the interface code that allows me to talk to the motor controller
QuickBASIC and Visual Basic are very different, despite their common name of "BASIC" and despite the fact they were both made by Microsoft. First you need to determine if the .BAS file is QuickBASIC or Visual Basic. A simple quick way (though not the most accurate) is to open the file up in Notepad or some other text editor. If keywords such as "OPEN" or "LEN" or "MID" or "CLOSE" are in uppercase, then its more likely a QuickBASIC file. If the keywords look more like "Open" or "Close" or "Len" or "Mid", then its more likely a Visual Basic file.
Now keep in mind that there are other versions of BASIC that have been developed, such as Turbo BASIC (Borland's version) or GW-BASIC or BasicA or PowerBASIC and even Color Basic.
Now if you can't figure it out this way, the next thing I'd suggest is downloading a hex editor, such as XVI32 (though there are many other free ones out there). Look through the file (especially towards the end of the file) and there are usually signs that indicate what kind of compiler was used. You might see the words "Microsoft Basic Compiler" or "Borland Turbo Compiler". Usually towards the end of the file, there are string "stubs" put in by the compiler or linker that you can use to determine the compiler.
If all that fails and you are desperate and that "300" number is hard coded in the program and you need to change it, then there is another way to do this. First back up your original exe file. Then Use XVI32 or some other hex editor and search for the string "2c01" (300 is 012c hex and you need to reverse the 01 and 2c since Intel machines are little-endian). Once you find an instance of 2c01, change it to "c800" (200 is 00c8. Little Endian version would be c800). Save the file, then rerun it. This is a gruesome trial and error way to fix this. If it was changed from 300 to 200, then everything is good! If not, restore from your backup and try again!
Have you considered getting an Arduino or some other low cost and friendly electronics development platform? I think it would be the way to go for you to control stepper motors...
take a look:
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/StepperUnipolar
If you google around you'll find tons of you tube videos showing off some arduino controlled stuff.
Modifying your current .exe seems to me a too long and hard path to follow instead of making your own and proper source code for achieving what you want, as you would need to disassemble the executable file and literally "know what you're doing" with all that assembly language to find where to patch the binary with the right value.
Anyway, if you post a picture or a schematic of your old hardware I could try to help you a little more, but I guess that would be better suited to this other stack exchange site:
http://electronics.stackexchange.com

Vb6 Printer Object Print Japanese

I want to use printer (windows driver) to print Japanese in a vb 6 project.
My project is in Japanese Windows Environment (the OS is English Originally, set Japan region and related language).
I use Printer object to print a simple string type of Japanese such as "レジースター", the code like
Dim s As String
s="レジースター"
Printer.Print s
Printer.EndDoc
but the output result is a set of messy code like "􀀀OEvƒOEƒ|􀀀[ƒg"
Does anybody who can succeeded in printing out Japanese with Vb6 Printer Object in Japanese language Windows Envrionment, please help me.
Finally find the key is simple, it's a little bit tricky but I still don't know why. Just set the font of the Printer Object like "Printer.Font.Charset = 128" (128 for Japanese)
ATTN: Pls pay attention to my case, my OS is English with the language and region setting to Japanese.
What make me confused is that the default ANSI of Windows. As we know, the default value of Printer.Font.Charset is 0, it means ANSI (IF the language environment is Japanese then it will use code page 932, if it is English, it will use Windows-1252).
My OS is Japanese (set to Japanese, not purely, Originally English OS), when I try to Write a file in Japanese it can display Japanese, but when I use the Printer Object to Print, it does have 0(ANSI) value of .Font.Charset, but actually it still use the original OS code page, so it is wired. And when I try to set the system to Chinese and Korean, both of the language is normal, only Japanese have this problem.
the trick that i have used for something like this is to use double StrConv() functions, one with the vbFromUnicode constant and the other with the vbToUnicode constant.
It takes alittle experimenting to get right , but it should look something like this, swap the constants and/or codepage values until you get the right conversion for your system
Dim s as string
s="レジースター"
Dim newS as string
newS = StrConv((StrConv(s,FromUnicode,CodePage1),ToUnicode,CodePage2)
Printer.Print newS
CodePage*N* is the Windows codepage value, 1252 for English, 932 for Japanese
Despite all strings in VB6 are Unicode (UTF-16), when it comes to interfacing with the world VB6 is completely non-Unicode.
You cannot store レジースター in your project file because the file is in ANSI.
You cannot simply pass a string to a declared API function because it will undergo an automatic conversion to ANSI first. To avoid this, you have to declare string parameters as pointers.
Apparently same happens to the Print call - the string gets converted to the currect ANSI codepage before it reaches the printer driver.
You can try printing manually by creating a device context and printing on it.
Or you can search for another solution, like this one (I did not try it).

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