Localizing EQ2MAP POI tooltip text difficulties?
 

Seeing that EQ2-East is going to launch some time soon (in fact it is now in the usual not-so-closed Closed Beta phase), I wanted to try localizing the EQ2MAP mod.

I tried editing the individual xml files for each zone and changed a few Tooltip="..." contents into Chinese, then saved as UTF-8 without BOM.

Problem: In-game, the map loads fine, but the Chinese characters come out mostly as empty boxes as if EQ2 can't find the font for it.

The rest of the UI continue to work smoothly with whatever Chinese strings they have. Just those tooltips I changed are garbled.

I'd appreciate any pointers. Or if it is preferred that EQ2MAP don't get localized, please do tell and accept my apologies.

I think you'd have to set your UI to use a Chinese-capable font. The one it uses by default probably doesn't support Unicode.

Isnt all your work gone as soon as you run the updater? i thought about trying to translate some POIs into german myself, but had no idea how to prevent the updater from overwriting my changes ( without disabling the updater for sure :P )

Greetings

Karkoris / Valor

Well, I suppose my problem is actually not knowing how to change the fonts.

But I read elsewhere on EQ2Interface, a developer mentioned that when we run a localized version of EQ2, the fonts get swapped automatically. I am running a localized version (Chinese Traditional), and all other UI elements display perfectly in Chinese. So I thought the default font should be fine.

Please could someone point me to a file in the EQ2MAP mod to change the fonts? I'll try to read up on the fonts.

As for the updates overwriting changes...that isn't much of a problem at all. I am a translater and have participated in a few software localizing projects. With the tools I have (unfortunately requiring a license), I can specify to extract all the Tooltip elements from the XML, translate and store in a databse, then stick them back into the XML. When an update comes in, I just have to extract the new version and apply the database to it, then translate those new and modified segments. (Computer Aided Translation, with Translation Memory database.) :)

Of course if you're familiar with the open source tool gettext, you could very much accomplish the exact same thing and it costs absolutely nothing. You'd have to learn to use it, though. (And any other tools to support it. I'm not that familiar with open source supported l10n procedures, but such things are being done all the time.)

when you made your font files, did you replace ALL the fonts or just one?
seems like it would be best if you went ahead and replaced ALL the font files. The servers are known to push a lot of things to the UI regardless of values set. It could be telling the UI to use a different font for the tooltips.

I didn't make any font files. I'm using the official Close Beta client for EQ2-East. It is a localized version that displays, inputs and reads Chinese perfectly. (And connects to the Taiwan EQ2-E CB server, not the US server.)

Does EQ2MAP itself not set any fonts? Does it use the default font for the current UI directly?

Or am I missing the point completely? :(

i play EQ2-East , but maps english change chinese . don't supper unicode or big5
what change font ?
i use <?xml version="1.0" encoding="big5"?> don't work
so plz help .

sorry poor english.