Chinese Charactersets in TM1?

[damientaylorcreata]

Hi Guys,

Could somebody please confirm that there is currently no support for UNICODE (and therefore no support for Chinese Characters) within TM1 prior to version 9.4? If so, does anybody have any ideas for getting around this, or do we really need to upgrade to get this functionality?

[Alan Kirk]

Hi Guys,

Could somebody please confirm that there is currently no support for UNICODE (and therefore no support for Chinese Characters) within TM1 prior to version 9.4? If so, does anybody have any ideas for getting around this, or do we really need to upgrade to get this functionality?

You could check with IBM as to whether they'll ever release Unicode support for pre-9.4 versions (and you're right, it doesn't exist to date), but my bet is that the answer you'll get is "no". It would require a substantial rewrite of "under the hood" code, and I doubt that they would see any value in doing that. It'd be much easier for them to advise users who need Unicode support to migrate to 9.4, which is where their development focus will be directed in future.

Although Iboglix often sneaks in some minor new features in update packs for earlier versions (new functions and such), I think that support for Unicode would be considerably more than a "minor" new feature and I can't see there ever being a 9.1 (much less 9.0 or earlier) release which incorporates it.

[David Usherwood]

My understanding is that they put it in 94 specifically for Asian character sets, so no, it is most unlikely to go back - which leaves you with the rest of the 94 'challenges'
For the record, using _Arabic_ script (very different I know) on machines running Arabic XP and Arabic Excel, 9.0 works very well. It's mangled on my laptop, but I can't read Arabic anyway. Thinking about learning it sometime, but haven't yet.

[Alan Kirk]

For the record, using _Arabic_ script (very different I know) on machines running Arabic XP and Arabic Excel, 9.0 works very well. It's mangled on my laptop, but I can't read Arabic anyway. Thinking about learning it sometime, but haven't yet.

Then how do you know that it's working well?

{Somewhere in Cairo....}
Mohammed: "I think that there's something wrong with this new TM1 application. I've just been reading the contents of the Sales_Commentary string cube, and... I'm not sure that it's right."
Sharif: "How's that?"
Mohammed: "Well, for the May results, it says 'All your chickpeas are belong to us'."

[David Usherwood]

Well....
a It looks right (feeble I know)
b My customers (who speak and read Arabic) say it's fine
c I have occasionally cut and pasted the results into Google Translate and it kind of makes sense.
So
حتى ذلك الحين لكم

[LoadzaGrunt]

IIRC there actually was a release of 9.1 that supported Unicode when Applix made a foray into the Asian market and needed double byte character sets. It was available for download for some time but was then quietly buried when 9.4 came on the distant horizon. Practically your only option sounds like an upgrade.

[kangkc]

Hi,
You can do Chinese characters in pre 9.4 release of TM1. The catch is you have to be on the respective language OS to enter the characters. In your case will be Chinese OS. Aliases can be entered under the Chinese OS in Chinese and excel templates etc will display correctly. However when reading it is using English OS, it will not be displayed correctly.

We have done that with Japanese OS using pre 9.4 release and it works fine. Have fun

[David Usherwood]

Which is....
The same behavior as for Arabic!
Yet another 'must have' reason to go to 9.4 bites the dust.