[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo ROM Development] Darkguy:
Something is terribly wrong with RealVGA and German localization!

Hey!

I love the device and the ROM, but I cannot currently really enjoy either one - something seems to be terribly wrong either with the integration of RealVGA into the ROM or TrueVGA itself. Since I read nothing similiar like my expirience on the RealVGA-thread I would guess it is a problem of RealVGA ROM integration. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what causes the problems I experience. This description is rather extensive, detailled and hopefully not too much of gibberish, but I wanted to be as clear as possible on what I did, and to find out what may cause this behaviour I am getting.

It's pretty much a few issues:

Translation of items only works once (English -> German), but things go awry when switching back or around again.

On my 2nd install, some items don't work anymore when I am in German localization.

Detailed descriptions:

My problem is with the integration of the language packs, not the resolution. I use TrueVGA not only to run in 96dpi, but also to localize the OS into German. There are a number of issues here, that mgiht be related.

First, I can only do the switch once. If I switch from English to German, everything is translated as it should be (names of folders and applications). I used to do this when I first installed the ROM, then subsequently installed all the additional applications over the course of a few days and generally enjoyed life and the device. Everything worked fine, with the exception of Excel (a problem that has been reported on the TrueVGA thread, but has, to the best of my knowledge, not been resolved yet).

I tried switching into English, to see if it work there. It did, but the programs folder was empty, and there was no settings folder. When I checked out, I saw that something strange happened - there was a mix-up in translations:

in English the folder-structure should be \Windows\Start Menu\Programs

in German it should be \Windows\Startmenü\Programme

now it was: \Windows\Start Menu\Programme

and: \Windows\Startmenü\Programs

I shrugged this off and switched back to German, where things pretty much stayed as they had been, including all the application-names being in English now, but with those interfaces that were translated in German (by the German ROM, like Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Mail, Windows Live, Word, PowerPoint and so on...). Also, my previously set-up mail-account was gone, with the unread messages still being displayed.

After some more switching back and forth to see if I could recover and delete the mail account, I removed the German language support (to see if that was causing any of the mail-realted problems) and to later reinstall it, but forgot to switch back to English before, resulting in a device that was so bricked that it required a hard-reset.

So far, so good. I wanted to solve this, so I did pretty much what I had done before, installed the German language pack and installed those apps I had with me at the time (on the micro drive). When I went into QuickGPS I got a prompt telling me: "Failed to create empty document", additionally some of the apps which used to run with an English interface in my previous German-localized ROM suddenly showed no text-interface (menus and such) at all, but still worked. When switching to English, things worked again (including QuickGPS), but on switching back to German, things were back to what I described above (which would be fine, with just the names of the apps being in English, but it generally just bothers me a lot).

I then did another hard-reset today and thought maybe I should install and do all of my settings in English, and switch to German as the finaly step. So I sepnt most of my afternoon installing and configuring everything to my liking and just installing the German localization as the final step and then switching. This resulted in my device not starting once again, rendering all of my efforts worthless (I should have backed up at this stage, I know that now and learned the heard way). The device now sits before me pretty much "naked" after the hard-reset (with the exception of being localized again), QuickGPS still doesn't work. I cannot, for the life of me, understand what I did differently from when I first installed a few days ago, where everything worked as expected in German (with the exception of Excel) with those apps without a translation simply running in English.

Is RealVGA included with the very lastest files posted by Tobias on the RealVGA thread on 09/14, or have the devlopers used a previous version, which might explain this behaviour? Is there a way to fully remove TrueVGA from the ROM and trying to install manually, maybe as a way so I could test if this behaviour persists when RealVGA is not part of the intial setup?

What I find strange is that RealVGA shows me a list of missing 0407.mui-Files at some times when switching, and not at all at other times. Can any of the developers just test this on a device and see if the same thing happens for you? Is anybody else with German language localization experiencing similiar problems? Does this happen to people who manually installed RealVGA in other ROMs than PK Black Touch v2.0? Can anybody help me, before I start going crazy? :(

I do not mind experiencing the ocassional bug, that's the price tag that that comes attached to testing and running bleeding edge technology, I learned to accept that a long tme ago. But this really gets frustrating, especially since I can really set this device up to virtually fulfill ALL my needs, and the only thaing that keeps getting in my way is that stupid localization issue.

Thanks, I hope anybody can point to why and where things go wrong.

Regards,

Darkguy