• English
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• French
• German
• Japanese
• Korean
• Spanish

Virtual PC will allow you to run multiple Windows environments, such as Windows XP Mode, from your Windows 7 desktop. You can find the download here and find more information on the Virtual PC website.

We talked about Microsoft Language Detection in this blog before, and how it can be used to validate correct localization of resources and text files.  

Another application of the new Extended Linguistic Services (ELS) is the analysis of customer feedback. During Windows 7 beta, we received beta bugs from customers all over the world (often sent using the “Send Feedback” tool) in many different languages and we had to look for ways not only to understand the feedback, but also to address it as quickly as possible.

Using the language detection API, we have been able to automatically detect the language of customer bugs as they are reported. Once we have detected the language, we take the resulting text and use the machine translation support that is available online from Live Translator. While the translation is not always perfect, it usually allows our engineers to understand the issue and to take further action.

You can find more information here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/07/07/engineering-windows-7-for-a-global-market.aspx

Well, it is true that not many localized OS are available in today’s market. But we havew solution here.

Started Windows 2000, Microsoft has developed new technology which allows product share the core product code with different resources files.  It is MUI. It stands for Multilingual User Interface. This technology allows application installed multiple interface languages on a single system. Usually we MUI means actually package which contains 1 or more language interface. On a system with MUI, each user would be able to select his or her own preferred display language.

On Vista, MUI technology has been improved more. Currently if user has Vista Ultimate and Vista Enterprise, there will be MUI packages available for user to free download.

Go here to learn more about MUI technology.
Go Windows Update site or download center to download MUI packages for your Vista Ultimate and Vista enterprise system.
Go here to learn how to install and switch UI on your system.

Note 1: MUIs will only work on a genuine copy of Windows Vista.  
Note 2: MUI pcakge is sensitive with your version of OS. For example, Vista SP2 MUI can be applied on previouse version of Vista, not backwards.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

The download is available in the following languages:

·        English

·        German

·        Japanese

·        Spanish

·        French

You can find out more about what’s new in Windows 7 here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/whats-new.aspx

In the international Testing world, we are facing a variety of challenges. One of them is to ensure correctness of localization files in the target builds. The builds matrix is huge as a result of the large number of languages we are localizing into, the big number of SKUs, and architectures.

Furthermore, there are extra complex steps in international build process compared to the English builds.  Complexity could be due to similarity of language code representation, this can cause uncertainty when people manually do localization check-ins; there are number of manual steps involved, etc... These complexities add risks that may result in having the wrong localization files in the builds.

Regular international testing has a hard time validating that the UI is in the expected language for the following two reasons:

·         International testing largely depends on automation which has to be language neutral.  It is not designed to detect what language is in a certain build.

·         Testers often do not have specific language skill. They cannot tell if UI/context is in the expected language during manual testing.

Previously, we had to rely on test engineers who have language skills to install each build, spot check the UI to ensure expected languages appear correctly. An alternative approach is the usage of “cheat sheets” to verify the product after installation. Both methods are costly and cannot guarantee 100% test coverage.     

Challenge for EULA verification

Let’s use EULA verification to exemplify the challenges discussed above.

EULA stands for End User License Agreement. An EULA is a legal contract between the manufacturer and/or the author and the end user of an application.  It details how the software can and cannot be used and any restrictions that the manufacturer imposes (e.g., most EULA’s of proprietary software prohibit the user from sharing the software with anyone else).

Since a EULA is legal document in the product, it takes very high priority among all other content validation. We have done a lot of upstream testing to ensure that there are no errors in the EULA content, that a unique identifier (EULAID) is correctly placed in each file, that there are no linguistic errors etc.  With all the testing, we could not 100% validate that the correct localized EULA file exist in each targeted build.  For example, if we, by accident put a Croatian EULA into the Russian build, regular upstream testing would not be able to catch this bug.

We have 36 languages, 13 SKUs, 3 architectures, multiple types of EULA, etc... The result is a huge number of EULA files that need to be verified. Even though there are strict processes being followed to avoid the introduction of defects, the test team still needs to verify that the correct EULA  exists in each released build. To do this validation in an efficient way without knowing the 36 target languages is a rather challenging task.

Solution

To address the challenges discussed above, we decided to extract the EULA files from the builds, and then use automation to detect the language, and make sure it matches what is expected in the build.

There is new set of services created by the Windows International team, called Extended Linguistic Services (ELS). The ELS components are installed automatically with Windows 7 and they introduce a new API set that allows us to do a whole bunch of things with text, including script- and language detection. We use this service to analyze EULA content to see if it is expected language.  

For more detailed information on ELS, go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/goglobal/dd156834.aspx#ELS5

You can find some code samples that show how to use the Microsoft Language Detection Service here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/goglobal/dd156834.aspx#ELS8

Using ELS, we developed  a test application which validates correctness of the localized EULA content.

Test Result

We have used our application validate EULA content. It takes about 3-4 hours to run through about 1600 files. There are about 1% false positives in the results, which are caused by the language detection not being able to conclusively detect the language in every scenario. Overall, the tool has been a great addition to our EULA verification process and helped us to identify incorrect files early on.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/03/09/application-compatibility-testing-international.aspx

The article covers the following areas:

To get the Japanese string “今日は医者に行く” (Today, I go to Doctor), do the following.

1.      Invoke Notepad and activate Japanese IME by hitting [Alt]+[~] or using input mode button on Language Bar.

2.      Input reading by roman input mode.
Type following à [k][y][o][u][h][a][i][s][h][a][n][i][i][k][u]

You’ll get hiranaga string “きょうははいしゃにいく”

Romaji-Kana Correspondence Chart is available on Japanese IME Help.  Open Japanese IME Help and go to “Romaji – Kana Correspondence Table\Romaji-Kana Correspondence Chart” node, or open IE and go to <mk:@MSITStore:C:\WINDOWS\ime\imjp8_1\Help\imjpcle.chm::/howIMETopic428.htm>.

3.      Then hit [Space] or [Convert] key to convert.  Please be noted that [Convert] key is only available on Japanese keyboard.

You’ll get “今日は 医者に 行く”. 

The underlined string is not determined.  In this mode, user can make some edit on the string to get most wanted result.  If you accept 1st result, hit [Enter] to determine.

4.      If you don’t accept 1st result, you can select from alternatives.  To open alternative list, hit [Space] or [Convert] once again.  You’ll get alternative list for the phrase with thick underline.  We call it “Active Phrase” or “Editable Phrase”.  If you want to change active phrase, please use left/right arrow keys.

You can close the alternative list by hitting numeric keys just beside the candidate you want.  In this case, if you hit [2], alternative list closed with “京は” is activated.  If you hit [Enter], alternative list closes with current candidate activatation and IME determines all undetermined string.

5.      You can make active length longer or shorter depend on the result string you need by using [Shift]+[Left/Right Arrow] keys.  Then hit [Space] or [Convert] to force IME to convert again.

Korean

1.      Switch to Hangul input mode by hitting [Right-Alt] key.  The key toggles Hangul and English input mode.

2.      Type Korean consonants and vowels.

[d][k][s] for 안
[s][u][d] for 녕
[g][k] for 하
[t][p] for 세
[d][y] for 요

The result is 안녕하세요, the meaning is “How are you?”.

Consonants and vowels are mapped on keyboard 1:1, so if you need consonant ㅇ type [d], if you need vowel ㅏ, hit [k].

3.      If you need Hanja, convert with [Right-Ctrl] key.  The key is assigned for Hanja conversion.  If your keyboard don’t have [Right-Ctrl], use the Hanja conversion button on Language Bar

A)       Input Hangul first.
[r][P][t][k][s][r][l] à 계산기

B)       In front of each character, press [Right-Ctrl] for Hanja conversion key.

In front of ‘계’, hit [Right-Ctrl].
You’ll get Hanja list for ‘계’.  Press [2] for ‘計’

In front of ‘산’, hit [Right-Ctrl].
 You’ll get Hanja list for ‘산’.  Press [3] for ‘算’

In front of ‘기’, hit [Right-Ctrl].
 You’ll get Hanja list for ‘기’.  Press [2] for ‘機’

Now you’ve got the string “計算機”.

If Office11, Korean IME 7.0 supports word to word Hangul Hanja conversion.  The feature is supported on Cicero Native apps like Word, Publisher11, WordPad on XPSP1.

Traditional Chinese

New Phonetic IME by Bopomofo.

1.        Switch to Chinese keyboard layout and select Phonetic IME (注音)

2.        Input “我是大帥哥” by using Bopomofo.
Each Bopomofo is following.
我 à [j][i][3]
是 à [g][4]
大 à [2][8][4]
帥 à [g][j][9][4]
哥 à [e][k][4]

3.        Inputting帥 by hitting [g][j][9].  With following [4], you will complete for 帥.

4.        If you don’t have Chinese character you want, use [Space] or [Down Arrow] key to open candidate list and select you want.To do this, move the cursor before the word.

New ChangJie IME by ChangJie code.

1.        Switch to Chinese keyboard layout and select ChangJie IME (倉)

2.        Input “我是美少女” by using ChangJie code.
Each ChangJie code is following.
我 à [h][q][i], then [Space]
是 à [a][m][y][o] , then [Space]
美 à [t][g][k] , then [Space]
少 à [f][h] , then [Space]
女 à [v] , then [Space]

3.        Inputting美 by [t][g][k].

4.        If you don’t have Chinese character you want, use [Space] or [Down Arrow] key to open candidate list and select you want.

Simplified Chinese

How to input “我是一只可爱的小花猫” by using Microsoft Pinyin IME.

1.      Switch to MSPY by hitting [Ctrl]+[Space].

2.      Input “我是一只可爱的小花猫” by PinYin.  The input should be continuously.  Sometimes you’ll get the result you don’t want, however, MSPY will correct automatically by language model (Bigram in MSPY 3.0).

我 à [w][o]
是 à [s][h][i]
一 à [y][i]
只 à [z][h][i]
可 à [k][e]
爱 à [a][i]
的 à [d][e]
小 à [x][i][a][o]
花 à [h][u][a]
猫 à [m][a][o]

3.      If you are not finalized (determined) yet, press [Right Allow] will show candidate list.

4.      To make error correction (re-conversion), do the following.
For TIP: Correction button on Language Bar.
On Notepad: Select and then right click and choose “Reconvert”.
On Word: [Windows]+[C]

5.      Some other PinYins.

ü  “nihao” for “你好”.

ü  “xiexie” for “谢谢”.

Reference:

For information regarding East Asian Writing Systems and IMEs, please go to Introduction to East Asian Writing Systems and IMEs

IME allows user to enter thousands of different characters used in EA languages using a standard keyboard. Users can compose each character using IME in one of several ways: by phonetic representation, by radical, by stroke count, or by typing in the character's numeric encoding index. IME is a must have functionality for EA users as they can’t type the characters of their languages without IME. If you would like to sell your application in EA markets, making sure your application work smoothly with IMEs would be a MUST have key feature for your application.

East Asian Writing Systems

Chinese: Three forms of ideographic characters are commonly used today in the world: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and kanji (which is used for Japanese). Traditional Chinese characters, which are thousands of years old and have kept their original shapes, generally contain more strokes than other ideographic forms, and are more pictorial. These characters are typically used in Taiwan. Simplified Chinese characters, which are based on Traditional Chinese characters, were developed in mainland China to make reading and writing easier to learn. Although Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese share some characters, the simplified characters, of which there are less than 7,000, are composed of fewer strokes and in most cases are distinct from their original counterparts. This is why software products developed for the Chinese-speaking market are usually released in two editions-one for the Traditional Chinese script and one for the Simplified Chinese script.

Japanese: Japanese characters are called "kanji." Japanese mixes kanji characters with characters from two syllabaries, collectively called "kana." The two forms of kana are referred to as "hiragana" and "katakana." Hiragana is a cursive script, commonly used in Japanese text to represent ending inflections for verbs and to write native Japanese words that have no kanji equivalent, such as "and," "of," and "to." Katakana is chiefly used to represent words borrowed from other languages. All kana symbols, except for single-vowel characters and the character "n," represent a consonant followed by one of five vowels. Hiragana and katakana both represent the entire Japanese script of sounds.

Korean: The Korean written language uses two types of characters: hangul and hanja. A hangul character is a single syllabic character created by combining one or more consonant signs and a vowel sign. There are 24 basic elements (14 consonants and 10 vowels), or phonemes, used to denote these signs; these elements are called "jamos." You can create up to 51 jamos by combining two or more basic elements to form additional vowels or consonants, called "compounds." Compounds and basic elements together comprise 21 vowels (10 basic vowels and 11 compound vowels) and 30 consonants (14 basic consonants and 16 compound consonants). A hangul character (syllabic) consists of an initial consonant, a medial vowel, and sometimes a final consonant. Nineteen of the 30 consonants can be initial consonants. All 21 vowels can be medial vowels, and 27 of the 30 consonants can be final consonants. This means that 11,172 hangul character combinations are possible, though far fewer are actually used. The Korean language also adopted hanja characters from Chinese and uses them for more formal written communication and to represent personal names. Most daily communication is written in hangul.

What IMEs are provides by Windows Vista?

Below table shows the EA IMEs provides in Windows Vista. The highlighted ones are the latest Microsoft IMEs.

Why IMEs integration testing with your applications is important?

1.      In this global world, it is getting more and more important to ensure high quality multilingual support in your application. As mentioned above, IME is a must have functionality for EA users as they can’t type the characters of their languages without IME. If you would like to sell your application in EA markets, making sure your application take EA characters input smoothly through IMEs would be a MUST have key feature for your application.

2.      Microsoft validates IME integration with standard Windows control. However, how IME behaves depending on how you implement the edit control in your application, thus IME working well with Windows common control doesn’t guarantee it will work well with your edit control. To ensure quality, you need cover IME integration testing for the editable controls in your particular application especially if you use private editable control instead of Windows common control.

3.      IME integration testing may not as costy as you have thought. MS IMEs are Unicode components, which run smoothly on every language of Windows OS. During your testing, you only need set up 1 testing environment, and can switch among different IMEs for one language or IMEs for different languages anytime you want.

What shall be included in basic IME integration testing with your application?

1.        Verify your application support IME input anywhere application’s features allowing keyboard input, such as install path, URL, Find window and etc.

2.        Verify your application detects correct default IME setting (On or Off)

3.        Verify usage of IME Hotkey with your application - turn IME on/off, switch language, switch IME, switch full width/half width

4.        Verify your application properly respond to and display IME input

For IME usage examples, please go to How to Use Microsoft IME to Input East Asian Characters

Reference:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/handson/user/IME_Paper.mspx

The Microsoft Certified for Windows Server 2008 Application Test Framework contains the following test cases to ensure that applications execute appropriately in multilingual environment:

For Unicode Compliance Applications

TC1.5.1 Support successful installation on any language of OS under any system locale and user locale

TC1.5.2 Perform all primary functionality on dynamically configured Multilingual environment

TC1.5.3 Support Users belonging to localized security group, with User name composed of Unicode characters from multiple language scripts

TC1.5.4 Support File I/O to Folders names composed of Unicode characters from multiple language scripts

TC1.5.5 Support printer names/paths that are composed of Unicode characters from multiple language scripts

TC1.5.6 Support Network shares, URI/URLs that are composed of Unicode characters from multiple language scripts

For non-Unicode Compliance Applications (Following tests must pass for each single language supported in application documentation.)

TC1.5.7 Install and perform primary functionality successfully on supported language localized OS under matched system locale and user locale with a user name composed of Unicode characters from supported language script

TC1.5.8 Support Users belonging to localized security group, with User name composed of Unicode characters from supported language script

TC1.5.9 Support File I/O to Folder names composed of Unicode characters from supported language script

TC1.5.10 Support printer names/path that composed of Unicode characters from supported language script

TC1.5.11 Support Network shares, URI/URLs that

Even if you are not planning to get certified, you might want to adopt these and other test cases included in the application test framework.

You can find more information regarding the logo program here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=111723