language dialog required, no language-dependent msi's r

[adlag]

I have an application in which the user can change the language on the fly. All (five) translations are in the exe file and so in one msi.
(And I am careful about all characters being in the codepage)

I want the user that installs the program to be welcomed with a language
selection box (that is choosing the language in which the installation
process will be communicated to the user).
I think Adv Inst gets the language from the msi-language or from the
locale, but many users like to make the language choice on the spot.

I do not think that this can be done with Adv Installer now, whereas it is
simple to implement

Ad

[Cosmin]

Hi,

This feature is already supported by Advanced Installer. To use it you can go to the "Media" page, "Bootstrapper" tab and in the "User Interface" section you select the "Display language selection dialog (for multi-language packages" option).

Note that this feature is available only for a multi-language package which uses an EXE bootstrapper.

You can read more about Advanced Installer's bootstrapper here:
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-g ... apper.html

Regards,
Cosmin

[jstevenco]

Hi Cosmin,

Is it possible to suppress the language select dialog during a command line driven silent install? I thought that using something like

Code: Select all

setup.exe /qn /g 1033

might work.

Cheers,

Steve

[jstevenco]

Hi all,

Okay, so I had some reading to do about how transforms work (my lack of knowledge was apparent in my previous post ). That and playing around with msiinfo, msidb and WiSubStg.vbs tells me most of what I want to know.

I can get the list of embedded transforms using the latter script. Having identified the names, if I leave the bootstrapper separate from the multilingual package I can use a command line like

Code: Select all

msiexec /qn /i mypackage.msi TRANSFORMS=:1031

to install German for example. For the most part, this is okay. However for the final release of the product I'd like to distribute a single EXE wrapping a compressed archive MSI. So far I am unable to suppress the language select dialog; e.g.,

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /qn TRANSFORMS=:1031

makes everything "quiet" except for the first dialog.

Any comments?

Thanks,

Steve

[Cosmin]

Hi,

This is a bug in Advanced Installer and it will be fixed in the next version (it is scheduled for release this month).

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Regards,
Cosmin

[janderssen]

Hi Cosmin,

This is a great feature and would like to ask if it is possible to have the drop down box actual display the language name in the language itself.

Cheers
Jason


[quote="cosmin"]Hi,

This feature is already supported by Advanced Installer. To use it you can go to the "Media" page, "Bootstrapper" tab and in the "User Interface" section you select the "Display language selection dialog (for multi-language packages" option.

Note that this feature is available only for a multi-language package which uses an EXE bootstrapper.

You can read more about Advanced Installer's bootstrapper here:
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-g ... apper.html

Regards,
Cosmin[/quote]

[Cosmin]

Hi,

Please note that this cannot be done because it is not supported by Windows. The way the names of the languages are shown is determined by the language of the Windows Operating System.

Regards,
Cosmin

[jstevenco]

Hi Cosmin,

Any update on when the revision looks to be ready?

Thanks,

Steve

[Cosmin]

Hi,

This issue will be resolved in the 6.2 version of Advanced Installer through a separate command line for the bootstrapper. This command line will allow you to make the bootstrapper silent and configure the way it will work through parameters.

Currently the 6.2 version of Advanced Installer is in testing and it will be released in the near future.

Regards,
Cosmin

[jstevenco]

Hi Cosmin,

I've downloaded the 6.2 release and am still having problems. A quick perusal of the documentation does not appear to include any guidelines as to how to make the multilanguage package install silently. Pressing on, I built my package and tried getting information about available options by using "/?" as part of the commandline. This did include some new information; I can now list the languages supported by my package. However, when I click OK the bootstrapper crashes. Furthermore, there is no indication as to how to select a given language. Also, using "/qn" has no effect; the select language dialog is still displayed.

Am I just missing something here? I tried it on my existing AIP and a new sandbox built from scratch--same result.

Yours confusedly,

Steve

[jstevenco]

Sorry -- I was not quite clear on something I said in the previous post. If I type

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /?

the available options are presented; clicking "OK" causes the bootstrapper to crash.

Typing

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /listlangs

lists the supported languages; no crash results from clicking OK.

Cheers,

Steve

[Cosmin]

Hi,

A quick perusal of the documentation does not appear to include any guidelines as to how to make the multilanguage package install silently.

In order to make the bootstrapper silent you can use the /exenoui parameter. You can read more about this here:
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-g ... -file.html

I built my package and tried getting information about available options by using "/?" as part of the commandline. This did include some new information; I can now list the languages supported by my package. However, when I click OK the bootstrapper crashes.

This is a bug in Advanced Installer. We will investigate this problem and release a new version with a fix for it as soon as possible.

Regards,
Cosmin

[jstevenco]

Hi Cosmin,

Thanks for pointing me to the documentation resource. With a bit of trial and error, I was able to achieve the functionality I need. I want to let you know that there does seem to be some behavior associated with this functionality that I don't think is intended, however. Specifically, there are parameter order dependencies, which you probably don't want. For example:

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /qn /exelang 1031

is not equivalent to

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /exelang 1031 /qn

The first version skips the language select dialog and goes into an interactive German install. The second version does a completely silent German install. Note that in neither case am I using the /exenoui flag. In fact, the /exenoui flag seems to have some implementation problems:

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /exenoui /exelang 1031

causes a Windows Installer error to be emitted, while

Code: Select all

mypackage.exe /exelang 1031 /exenoui

shortcircuits the language select dialog, but does not select German.

It might be a good idea to include a better summary of the command line options associated with the bootstrapper when the user uses the "/?" flag as well.

Keep up the good work; AI is good stuff!

Cheers,

Steve

[Cosmin]

Hi,

Please note that in the bootstrapper command line the parameters of the bootstrapper must come before the parameters of the MSI package. Therefore, the command "mypackage.exe /qn /exelang 1031" is incorrect and the command "mypackage.exe /exelang 1031 /qn" works as expected (the /exelang parameter selects the German language and the /qn parameter is passed to the MSI package).

Note that the /exelang parameter replaces the language select dialog and the /exenoui parameter sets the UI level for the bootstrapper to silent (this parameter refers to the prerequisites dialogs).

Also, currently you cannot use both parameters (/exenoui and /exelang) in the same command line for an EXE boostrapper:
- if you use /exenoui then the defaults are used and no UI is shown
- if you use /exelang then the language selection dialog is not shown, but the boostrapper uses an UI for the prerequisites (if there are any)

However, we plan on doing some improvements for the bootstrapper command line based on your suggestions. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Regards,
Cosmin

[jstevenco]

Hi Cosmin,

Thanks for the comments. The main reason I called out the /exenoui and /exelang parameters being used together was because of the documentation:

You can use both an UI level and /exelang command line options at the same time.

If you are referring to a Windows Installer UI level you should be more explicit, as in the body of your documentation where the above line occurs you have just finished discussing bootstrapper UI level options; somewhat confusing! Also if the /exenoui parameter is aimed specifically at prerequisites dialog functionality this should be called out in the docs.

In principle I have no problem with the Windows Installer cmdline options being constrained to be at the "end" of the cmd line, but again the docs should call this out. In general command line parameters are not as a rule order dependent, so you can understand my confusion on that point.

Cheers,

Steve