LSL7 the "Other" verbs pool list

[Kawa]

If you type ' and e in that order and get an e-acute, you're using dead keys.
If you hold right-alt and type e, and that gets you an e-acute, you're using AltGr.
And then there's alt-0233, on the number pad, which is the value for e-acute in decimal.

And if you try to use dead keys but your system isn't set up to expect it, you get 'e instead, which is technically exactly what you typed, after all. And "m ' e l k" (five bytes/characters) is not the same as "m e-acute l k" (four bytes/chars). So of course if you type "m'elk" it's not gonna be recognized.

So Doomlazer, which was it?

[doomlazer]

I switched my keyboard to the French layout because I knew I could type [e acute] directly using the number 2 key. That's how I both edited the message patch and entered the commands in-game.

Take anther look at the German 13.msg because I noticed the encoding is different from my test with e-acute. The German extended characters are not what I'd expect to see in game or typed by the player. I should know the answer to this but my brain refuses to remember this or anything to do with codepages

[Kawa]

You took a fourth option, right, lol.

As for encoding, is it the whole DOS 437 vs Windows 1252 codepage thing?

[doomlazer]

I feel like that has to be it. Wish my brain remembered more gooder. There was mention of alt-shift to switch keyboards. I have an option in my menu bar to switch between french and english. I always switch before launching scummvm or dosbox because I don't think they respect the change after launch. Maybe that's a contributing factor? I know you can dictate which keyboard is used in the config files.

As for other resources, you might like to connect with the French and Spanish translation forums. I just use deepl to post on those, but I could provide a warm introduction to SCI translators if that would help. Lots of cool people on either site who might have some insight.

[miracle.flame]

I was refreshing the page for days until I realized there won't be anything new on page one and I have to switch to page two.

German msg are using OEM850 or something like that to view them properly in Notepad++.
Right Alt plus e gives me (Euro symbol) on Czech KBL but I get the point of using AltGr.
ASCII typing with alt+0233 works but no one is gonna play like that.

So I take it you've typed the character normally like anyone would using the proper KB layout set. The thing is when I do the same, that is I launch the game in ScummVM while having CZ layout set, the game types quite puzzling characters and patterns:
1=+ (the only expected character for CZ layout)
2=2
3=3
4=4
5=5
6=6
7=?
8=Whitespace
9=Whitespace
0=Whitespace

So that's why I was asking how did you manage to type it? CZ characters in fon file have accented e on the same 0233 spot both in CZ and FR.
Seems to be more like a question what KB layout ScummVM thinks it's using?

I would very much like to get introduced to the right party and forum board at Abandonware Forums, I've registered as miracle.flame there. Could you please make the post there and send me the link, Doomlazer?

[Kawa]

Another issue to keep in mind is that Alt-0233 means character 233 or 0xE9. That's e-acute in Unicode, Windows 1252, and ISO-8859-1 aka Latin-1. This is because Unicode's first 256 characters are quite literally in the same order as ISO-8859-1.

Codepage 850 (DOS Latin-1) has the e-acute at position 130 or 0x82. So does 437 (Latin-US), and a few other DOS codepages that use the Latin alphabet.

This is why recent SCI Companion has a feature to automatically map between DOS 437 and Windows 1252. You type 0xE9, it's automagically translated to and from 0x82.

[doomlazer]

In ScummVM, each game should have it's own language setting. Have you tried setting it to Czech (if that is an option)? In my test, I believe I left it set to english, but changing it might resolve the problems you're seeing. I'll check when I'm home from work and make sure I didn't set it to French or something. The language is usually deturmined in ScummVM by the detection table for each game, but should also be manually assignable.

As for Abandonware France, you need to post a few times before Direct Messages are enabled, so I'd recommend starting by posting a brief introduction in this thread.

The game translation sub-forum is here. Feel free also start a new thread there as well. I'm going to let my friend Theepwang know you've joined and see if they can bypass the post requirements for DMs.

Edit: looking at ScummVM with LSL7, I can't change the language - it's set by the detection tables. That means a custom version of scummvm would be needed to change the setting to Czech. If it works in testing and the translation is completed, the Czech version could be submitted for inclusion in tables. Are you comfortable compiling a custom version of ScummVM?

[miracle.flame]

Changing the game language in ScummVM was the first thing I've checked but it is fixed on English without an option to switch it. If I am comfortable to compile a custom build of ScummVM is a good question. I've never done that, not even tried MSYS2 so going through the docs was not very comfortable for me but I guess it's worth the shot when I have a fit-brain day... which is probably not today  but it will come and I'll let you know how my first attempt went.

I was trying to find a way how to post on the Intro board at the AW forums but couldn't. There are no other functional buttons besides Subscribe, not matter if I switch the forums to French or English language. Also strange is that opening My profile gives me "Sorry, you're not allowed to see this page." while I can actually configure the profile in another section. I am sure I have activated the account via e-mail activation link yesterday. No change today.

[Kawa]

You guys use MSYS2 to compile your custom ScummVMs? /j

Anyway, with regards to how type a given character: on today's modern fully Unicode OSes, or at the very least modern Windows, the keyboard layout merely determines which characters you can type, and how. Pressing the "E" key doesn't tell the application to process "E", it tells the system you pressed a key with scancode 0x12. The system then determines from the layout you specified that scancode 0x12 means "E" and sends that to the focused application. Likewise, on a French layout, scancode 0x03 with no modifiers means e-acute, but for me an unmodified scancode 0x03 means "2". And on a Hungarian keyboard, the dedicated e-acute key is next to the "L" with scancode 0x27. For me, that's a semicolon.

But no matter if you use deadkeys, altgr, or a physical dedicated e-acute key, you're getting character U+00E9 and that's how it's understood.

However! I don't know how ScummVM's language settings are supposed to influence keyboard layouts. And even in the year of our Luigi 2025, there are applications that are not made Unicode-aware. Such as SCI Companion, which is violently non-Unicode! If you run it on your average American or Western European Latin alphabet using computer, it'll use the Win-1252 code page. If your system is set up to use Greek for non-Unicode applications (or you used AppLocale or its ilk to switch locales for just that application) it'll implicitly use Win-1253 instead, replacing the upper 128 characters and changing the meaning of the byte 0xE9 from e-acute (U+00E9) to lowercase kappa (U+03BA).

And if you set it to Japanese and disable the DOS to Windows remap feature in SCI Companion, it can correctly show and edit the text for PC-98 Police Quest II. Isn't that wild.

[doomlazer]

I used these instructions and Visual Studio 2019 to compile. It's a bit of a process for me, but the wiki did provide enough info to work through it.

Do you not have the "Envoiyer la reponse" button (see attached)? If not I'll ping one of the admins to look into it.

And if you set it to Japanese and disable the DOS to Windows remap feature in SCI Companion, it can correctly show and edit the text for PC-98 Police Quest II. Isn't that wild.

That is pretty cool.

[miracle.flame]

I have realized there is no way for me to get the desired characters in game. Even typing Alt+0233 actually types 0233 and one bonus whitespace as a result of the combo I guess. Typing Alt+0100 types 0100d though.

As for the AW forums, this is how I have it.

[doomlazer]

I'm asking how to get that forums issue fixed.

Did you see there is a polish version of LSL7 in the Scummvm detection tables. Says GOG.com release, but is it an official Sierra release? Pardon my ignorance, but is the character set similar to Czech? If they were able to do it, I'd imaging it must be possible somehow.

[miracle.flame]

Polish is using the same cp1250 as Czech so it should work. What exactly is the snippet in detection tables indicating and how can this be used for our profit?

[doomlazer]

Eventually, you'd create a separate entry for the translation, but for testing I'd suggest changing this line in the English LSL7 from "Common::EN_ANY" to the Czech language identifier; would need to verify what that is exactly, but probably something like CZ_CZH. That should cause the english version lsl7 to set the lang as Czech when added to ScummVM.

Edit: Looks like it is actually CS_CZE.

FYI, for the full detection table entry, you'll probably want to add the MD5 hash for the PATCHES/13.msg as well as the english resmap.000 & ressci.000 to distinguish it from the english version. Wouldn't want to do that during testing/development though because every time 13.msg changes, it would require recompile of the custom scummvm.exe

Code: [Select]

// Larry 7 - English DOS CD (from spookypeanut)
// SCI interpreter version 3.000.000
{"lsl7", "", {
{"resmap.000", 0, "eae93e1b1d1ccc58b4691c371281c95d", 8188},
{"ressci.000", 0, "89353723488219e25589165d73ed663e", 66965678},
AD_LISTEND},
Common::EN_ANY, Common::kPlatformDOS, ADGF_NO_FLAGS, GUIO_LSL7 },

// Larry 7 - Czech DOS CD (fan translation by miracle.flame)
// SCI interpreter version 3.000.000
{"lsl7", "", {
{"resmap.000", 0, "eae93e1b1d1ccc58b4691c371281c95d", 8188},
{"ressci.000", 0, "89353723488219e25589165d73ed663e", 66965678},
{"PATCHES/13.msg", 0, "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx", xxxx},
AD_LISTEND},
Common::CS_CZE, Common::kPlatformDOS, ADGF_NO_FLAGS, GUIO_LSL7 },

You use scummvm.exe from the command line to generate the MD5 information.

Code: [Select]

c:\scummvm.exe --md5 --md5-path=path/to/13.msg --md5-engine=SCI

[miracle.flame]

Sorry for the inconvenience here but I have received another activation e-mail which results in failed activation, asking me to use activation form instead entering an activation code. When I do that it basically throws the same error about invalid address with suggestion to use this same procedure instead. The activation e-mail says the identifier is miracle.flame and not an e-mail address. Might as well forget about this altogether.

Thank you for the extra info for compilation. I won't be here for the weekend so I might respond way later when I get my hands to trying the compilation.