The "À" character is rendered improperly.
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#2 The "À" character is rendered improperly.
Hi Jerome,
I was checking my translations and found that the French "À" character is rendered improperly, as you can see on the attached screenshot (in the middle of the picture showing PGME documentation in French, it should have been "À faire (tôt ou tard, peut-être) :". Note that this character is supported by IBM CP 850.
Also, comparing the ASCII table of FreeDOS Edit and PGME, there were several discrepancies IIRC. Maybe a font issue and the font file needs to be edited/replaced?
Hello @tizizi,
Based on what your message says, my interpretation is that you are possibly seeing a couple issues. First, the miss-represented character is not PGME or it's fonts. When PGME "executes" a program, the main (or all of PGME depending settings for the program) shutdown. One of the things that always happens is FONTS are reset to back to whatever codepage the system is configured to use.
When you open one of the documents in the menu, PGME resets the font and executes the process to view the file. QSCROLL is the viewer provided with PGME. It does not use or set any fonts. It just uses whatever is currently present.
The Big Text version of the readme does slightly more. PGME resets the font to the configured codepage. Then starts the process to view the document. This process first uses QFNTLOAD to set the screen to a large (8x26) font. Then the document is viewed in QSCROLL. The QFNTLOAD is run again to reset the font. And finally, you are returned to PGME which loads one of its fonts.
So the font used to view documents by QSCROLL (except Big Text Readme) are the normal system codepage font. It is possible that there is a character codepage issue with the text readme file. I'll contact the translator. Hopefully, it is just that codepage issue and he can resolve it easily.
As for the ASCII table in FreeDOS edit, I'm unsure to when you are seeing that issue. Is in the readme or in PGME itself? If it is in PGME, please verify that it is using the French font. In the latest release, PGME tries to set the Language and Font based on the LANG environment setting. However, it only does this until you change any option in the display or config settings dialog. Once one of those is set, it starts locking in those settings. So, if you were using it in English and change the screen saver, then switched to French, your font may be left as the one for English. At present, only the FR850-16.FNT contains the required characters for French. If the font in PGME is set correctly and you are still seeing issues with characters inside PGME itself. It is possible there is a font or translation file issue.
That all being said, the FR850-16.FNT is by no means perfect. It is something I whipped up quickly to support the French Language Translations. You can verify that font using the Eternity Font Designer. It's really simple to use. If you feel up to the task, the font could use improvement and I'd be happy to include additional resolutions (like 8x18, 8x20).
Keep me posted on what's going on. Regardless of where the problem is located. If there is an issue in a font, doc or translation, I'd like to fix it.
:-)
Last edit: Shidel 2021-08-18
This is not a font issue, nor is it related to PGME as everything works fine under DOSBox -- see the attached screenshot. Sorry for the noise.
BTW, under DOSBox hitting a key on that documentation screen exits the program and you can see a Illegal command: PGM.BAT at the bottom of the screen.
Hi,
First, there was a update to PGME on 8-20. It fixes a minor UI bug caused by adding the Power Reduction features that was not noticed until after release. It also adds support to remember Scroll settings in QScroll and last used scale for the TIME screen saver (S key). Also a couple other minor tweaks.
Basically, PGME creates a launcher called PGM.BAT. It's not 100% required for everything. But when present and used to start PGME, it allows it to do "complex" launches and also completely remove itself from memory freeing an additional 10k.
I could be wrong. But, I believe the error you see was caused by just unzipping PGME and not installing it. By just unzipping it, the PGM.BAT probably won't end up where it is supposed to go. It needs to be in a directory listed in your %PATH% evironment variable. Generally, using "
fdinst install pgme.zip" will do this and the Package version of PGME is configured based on the current settings for FDNPKG/FDINST. But that does not guarantee PGME gets installed and configured correctly. So, I ususally recommend using the PGME installer.If you installed using FDINST/FDNPKG or the Installer and still got that error, then something may have been broken in the most recent release for that file. If you just unzipped it, check the PGM.BAT file and verify it points to the location of PGME and move it some where like %DOSDIR%\BIN .
Either way, let me know. :-)
Last edit: Shidel 2021-08-28
This happens with a standard install by unzipping the latest archive from SourceForge and then running INSTALL.EXE. Simply typing
set path=c:\
in DOSBox made the problem go away as that's where the installer puts pgm.bat :)
Two closing remarks: the installer doesn't seem to take set lang=fr into account (everything happens in English but after that PGME is indeed in French), and you forgot to update the copyright years in the about dialog ;)
Ah, I see... Thanks for the update.
The installer looks at the path settings and lists them as options for where to put the PGM.BAT. It automatically excludes drive Z: on DOSBox (not writable) and some others. Then picks what it thinks is the "best" place. That filtering and selection of the paths could use a little more improvement. Also, I should probably add a warning if the selected path is not in the PATH list (or mabye add it).
As for Installer Language, I know. It's comming. It will probably be in the next update.
Basically the way the installer used to work in previous releases, it was kind-of possible. But, would have required config files, translations and a few other things as external files that would have to be brought along with the install.exe file. I though that was messy and prone to some issues (like forgetting to copy a file).
But in the recent release, the orignal way the installer handled files has been replaced by a new asset managment library. With a little more work down in the core initialization of QCrt based programs (PGME and most of the related programs and utilities), it will be possible to embbed all the required stuff to perform the translation of the UI directly into the program. Unfortunately, I wanted PGME released before the recent FreeDOS online get-together. I just didn't have the time to make and test those fundimental changes.
I'll try to squeeze that in before 1.3-RC5.
Long term, I have numerious things I'll like to add to PGME. To just name a couple, ability to do a pre-launch option popup to customize settings for the launch. In other words... If a game can be set to run with/without sound only by options at startup, PGME could be told to prompt for Sound on/off. Ability to detect and identify removable media, then update menu accordingly and possible offer to launch when inserted while running. A editior to help make customized launch music tones. Face it, writing a 100:1,200:5... is far from the easiest way. Plug-ins. Like calender, todo list, etc. And much, much more... Eventually.
Last edit: Shidel 2021-08-29