Windows XP IME's

[MMX]

Isn't there any goddamn way to display east asian languages in windows explorer and other applications that don't have native display libraries for ea languages (as in, use the Win Regional Display settings or whatever they're called in XP vs Vista I don't even care anymore) without installing those nasty Windows IME's?  I don't need to input the language damnit.  I hate how they always run at startup.  Although I guess I could always delete the registry keys in Run and just see how the display goes after that.

On a related note that I've always wondered about - what about non-Unicode programs?
For that matter does anybody have any refernences that explain the Regional and Language Options in both XP and/or Vista?  So many of them seem redundant.  Must be some way to match non-Unicode programs on a language by language basis instead of setting them all to English.  Might be an option in application-specific Properties dialog, though I'm too lazy to right click on any of my apps to check so HAR to you.  I've been doing tech support for over two years and I still have no idea what the code page conversion tables DO exactly.

Or which option in the Regional and Language actually does the IME install.  Note they never use that terminology in the actual control panel applet.  I've never understood how languages in Windows works exactly.  Like when I was trying to manually install a Vista service pack and the whole multilingual/five-language thing annoyed me... and then there is the whole MUI/LUP thing when I tried to install English on some Korean student's laptop, which only seemed to have KO installed, because she requested it and I was basically like "yeah sorry miss but I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing".

Or what the advanced options in Text Services and Input Languages DO exactly?  And why the fuck there are so many IME related executables running at startup in the first place... why three exactly?  I mean define "Extend support of advanced text services to all programs" I mean... what programs would get advanced text services if that WASWN'T checked exatly?  And is a keyboard necessary to install in order to display the language?
I've tried tweaking before but getting mixed results.

You know when backslash becomes the yen character in some cases?  Yeah I have no idea how I got that before, and I finally got it to go away - by turning of all IME's and uninstalling all additional languages and turning off advanced text services and keyboards and no I have no idea what the difference between those four things are.

PS. That new pic on the imgbb with the girls stripping Karen is hawt.  For a Karen pic at least.

[JG]

Are you saying you want Japanese support in programs that need it, but English as the default and no IME?  To my knowledge you can't get Japanese menus in Windows Explorer and other Windows apps without the IME.  But I did find a combination that gives me Japanese when I need it, and English everytime else, although sometimes 3rd party apps (namely those by Adobe and Apple) don't play by the Windows design rules and still come up as Japanese on me.  Don't know if the same setup works as well in Vista though.

All of this happens on the Regional and Language Options control panel app:
1 - Ensure East Asian files installed on the Language tab.
2 - On Advanced tab, check the Japanese codepages 20932, 50220, 50221, 50222, and 932.
3 - On Advanced tab, set language for non-Unicode programs to Japanese. (This makes most older games use Japanese)
4 - On Regional options tab, set your Standards and Location to whatever you like (such as English and United States) (this makes Explorer and "good" Windows apps use English)
5 - Click that Details button on the Languages tab, the remainder of the steps all happens there:
6 - Set default input language to English and keyboard service to US (assuming thats what you chose in step 4) (this makes it so when you type you don't get kana)
7 - Click Language Bar button and uncheck the "Show on desktop checkbox" (This hides the IME controls)
8 - On the Advanced tab of Text Services and Input Languages window, uncheck the two checkboxes there (This makes it so non-Unicode but CodePage aware apps like Notepad don't try to bring up the IME on you.)

[MMX]

Thank you I'll try that later this week.

What is CodePage?

[bfg00]

AppLocale will also allow you to run programs with different language bases.  Unfortunately it doesn't work for everything (and apparently it is only for XP and 2003 Server).  Here is a link:

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx

[JG]

What is CodePage?

The code page is the encoding scheme number in Windows.  For example, 932 is Japanese Shift-JIS, which (written as a string, such as in a meta html tag) is the "shift_jis" encoding name.  1232 is the default Latin-1 code page used in English versions of Windows, which is close to the iso-8859-1 encoding.

Since code pages are a encoding, and something of a subset of Unicode, Code page aware apps utilize a Windows hueristic feature ot guess theright encoding.  They take the input text document (or at least, the first N characters or so) and compare it to the code pages installed on the system to find the closest match.  This is how Notepad knows to display a Japanese text file in Japanese.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_code_page for more info.

[黒い灯影]

And I thought everybody knew that.... >_>

[MMX]

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_code_page for more info.

Ooh tasty Wiki morsel.

I wish I understood exactly how text rendering worked.  Like from the top all the way down.  Or bottom up.  Or whatever.

I also wish I wasn't R-tarded but hey we can't have everything we'd like.

BUT IF YOU TRY SOMETIMES
YOU MIGHT FIND
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED

You ever watch the Wizard of Oz and when you see the scarecrow you think... somebody in 1939 was trying to make fun of you?