Question to LAM bgee_language

[Wisp]

I expect I'll present what findings I have at some point (spoiler: the outlook's bleak. Mostly due to licencing.)

Okay, that's probably enough suspense.
The thing is, I can't do this because of setup-mymod.exe. WeiDU is licenced under modified GPL terms that permit you to distribute unaltered binaries without any further conditions. There appears to be two possible conversion libraries available (libiconv and Camomile) and they are both licenced under regular LGPL terms, which do not permit the distribution of binaries without additional conditions. I can't very well say "From now on, additional terms and conditions apply to the distribution of WeiDU that did not apply before. I abide by them. Whether you do the same is your business *wink wink, nudge nudge*". Hence, I can't include conversion abilities in WeiDU due to setup-mymod.exe.

However, at the risk of giving things away, perhaps I should mention that I am working on something that will hopefully make setup-mymod.exe obsolete. Once you've gathered around to sing Ding-Dong! The shell menus are dead I'll be able to revisit this problem and most likely implement a nice solution. Until then, I guess I'll try to make the HANDLE_* function user-friendly.

1. Setup-oldmod.exe is executed, user selected "Polish" translation,
2. WeiDU detects XX:EE and also read folder with translated files are. Path contain "polish".
3. WeiDU reads "Conversion map:"

It is possible, but there are a few problems.
1. The name of the language directory is completely arbitrary. It will probably work for most cases, but when it doesn't, it'll get it wrong.
2. There are no guarantees about the encodings (the actual encoding may be different from what we think it is) or the sane-ness of the implementation (e.g., some implementations mix different encodings in the same file.) and WeiDU, by itself, can't know if this is a TRA file that contains strings that should be added to the game, or if it is a TRA file that contains strings that are displayed during the installation. The latter should be converted, the former should not be and if the two kinds of strings exist in the same file, all bets are off.
3. I hate automatic systems that can't be reasonably relied upon to get things right. (In this particular case, the possible treats include unexplained crashes and other problems because no one vetted the compatibility and patch after patch after patch to try to get the automatic-ness right.)

[Wisp]

Not that you are likely to miss it anyway, but HANDLE_CHARSETS (as it came to be called) is expounded upon here.

[AL|EN]

I'm dying today from my first ever allergic reaction. I will reply when I feel better.

[AL|EN]

I saw HANDLE_CHARSETS and it's really handy. But you have to face reality that most of the old mods will never be updated due to "you can't host fixed mod archive without signed permission from the author that is absolutely beyond any way of reaching".

Even if I feel that it's a lost case already, I'll show you what it looks like from my perspective. Thats an non-english user who install mods via BWS.

First is the license problems. It's exaggeration of the problem. Period. License for weidu is one thing and license terms for (lib)iconv is another thing and
zipping two tools and two license files into one zip file should be no problem for anyone. especially that is so valuable for this community.

Second:

1. Yes, It can fail in 0.01% cases. This particular mod needs to be updated anyway and renaming one directory is very easy. For the rest of 99.99% it would be fine.
2. Old and not updated mods have ANSI+local codepage character set. I've just checked for eg: Chloe and it's install perfectly fine on BG2:EE when you just convert polish files to UTF-8 using Windows-1250 character set. Same goes for almost all old mods. If there will be a problem, then the mod should get an update. All mods that can be converted automatically deserve it.
3. You can never avoid all of the bugs/crashes. No need to update the old mod is for me something worth every effort and that "something can go wrong sometimes"

Since you already put huge amount of work to wiedu I won't nag you about this anymore.

[Kaeloree]

IE modding is already a legal grey area. It does pay to be careful in our case.

[jcompton]

I saw HANDLE_CHARSETS and it's really handy. But you have to face reality that most of the old mods will never be updated due to "you can't host fixed mod archive without signed permission from the author that is absolutely beyond any way of reaching".

It's probably not as bad as you think, actually. Although numerically you may be right that a maintainer cannot be feasibly reached for "most" mods (as there are many, many mods out there), I submit that a responsible party can be reached to bless a straight-up EE fix for the vast majority of mods that people actually play.

People can contact me to submit EE fixups of all PPG and WeiDU.org mods, for example. (And I believe at this point that basically everything on PPG which anybody plays has been fixed.) I'd be surprised if other sites didn't have a similar policy among their remaining overlords and maintainers.