how can I force display in another language - windows

I'm currently using a Vista computer with settings in French.
For creating help files and taking screen snapshots purposes, I need to force windows to display start menu, control panel etc... in English, and later German, Spanish...
Of course, I can't afford to buy several computers! Is there a way to change the system language display?

Windows 7 now comes with language packs (see video)
Apparently the same is true for Vista

Related

Customize Windows 10 Start Menu

I have a potential requirement of modifying the Windows 10 Start Menu structure. I know that you can customize the groups and tiles: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/deploymentguys/2016/03/07/windows-10-start-layout-customization/
My question is if there is any possible way (through API or any other option) that allows to, instead of only pinning windows desktop applications, display your custom code.
Example: we have a group called My work which pins windows applications, but we also have a group called Discover which displays custom code, not windows 10 apps.
I think it is not achievable, but want to give it a try and ask the community. Thanks a lot in advance!
Modify start menu should not be a feature of common UWP development. The start menu should only be controlled by customer themselves. So it's not possible for you to think about develop this kind of feature.
And as you've already see that OEM can modify OEM group. Actually you can find related info from here.

How to display Apple San Francisco's numbers mono-spaced rather than proportionally?

I've recently installed El Capitan on OSX, which comes with the new San Franciso font as system font.
The apple presentation here
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=804
(Bit of an overview here: http://codemotionapps.com/san-francisco-display-vs-text-compact-vs-normal-a-brief-review/)
states that, by default, numbers are displayed proportionally.
They do allow to switch to displaying them mono-spaced (at least in their API for developers).
I'd like to activate this alternate mode as a user in the Notes app.
Is there a shortcut to do this, just as you would, say, mark text as bold?
Number formatting of an OpenType font requires having control over which features are active during text shaping, something which typesetting tools will offer (InDesign, XeLaTeX, etc), but which normal productivity tools still (after a decade of Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft all agreeing on using OpenType!) don't offer. Notes included.
So, unfortunately, you'll either have to live with this, or contact the Notes team to get OpenType feature control added, or (entirely legally) run the font through a common, free, professional font tool like FontForge or TTX, (legally) change the default feature set to include monospaced rather than proportional numbers, (legally) generate a new font (remember to also change the metadata so you explain what this new font is: not the original, and not 'yours'), and then (legally) install that on your own machine.
Although despite all of that being legal, you will have violated the font license, so that's a thing to keep in mind.

Why does a Lazarus form look 'incorrectly different' on Windows

I create my programs on Ubuntu 12.04 and compile them on Windows (when necessary).
Recently I noticed that my Lazarus projects look different on Ubuntu and Windows. The problem is on Windows XP, 7 and 8. I'm not sure if Vista looks the same.
For example, group boxes containing radio buttons look shrunk in height, thus hiding parts of the components.
Now I have to edit this forms on Windows before compiling for those platforms. What's worse is that when I bring these project back to Ubuntu, the forms looks unnecessarily stretched out (in height).
Is there a solution to this?
Thanks!
It is easily to check if the controls themselves have the same height(just query their left and top properties and dump it in a memo or log for verification)
If that is ok, it is probably the font. Default fonts are subject to themes, and sometimes readability/disability settings.
Consistent cross-platform look is not a trivial task and does not come at no-cost.
Read http://wiki.freepascal.org/Autosize_/_Layout, especially the part that can scale controls on your form depending on the font size that the end user has configured in the Control Panels
Read few chapters from Google: "windows dpi aware applications"

Write and edit text in Windows (particularly Visual Studio) using a stylus

Is there any hardware or software that would let me edit text documents and simulate mouse clicks using just a stylus? I want to be able to write programs in Visual Studio using a stylus for keyboard and mouse input. Hardware cost isn't an issue. Thanks.
P.S. I have an wrist RSI that is making typing on a keyboard impossible but I really don't want to end my programming career. I know there are other input methods but this is the one I'd most prefer.
There was a Tablet PC edition of Windows XP that offered stylus support, including handwriting recognition. Since then, tablet functions and handwriting OCR have been baked straight into Windows.
If you're running Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1, you can probably launch it right now. Search for the Tablet PC folder in the Start Menu. In Windows 7, you'll find it under Accessories.
As far as using handwriting OCR in VS is concerned: I would expect you'll need to tune your dictionary to include the names of components, or turn off predictive corrections entirely. Camelcase and autocorrect don't see eye to eye.

Making a vb.net application blend in with the Windows theme

Previously I used to piddle around with VB6 to develop a couple of personal projects. Following my upgrade to Windows 7, I've decided to piddle about with vb.net Express Edition 2010.
If I wanted my VB6 application to blend in with the visual style of Windows, I would use the code and techniques described here. In short, I would use a Manifest file and a couple of calls within the application and most of the elements would look similar to the XP theme applied. If it was run on 2000, 95 or 98 then it would look like a standard Windows app. All was good.
Now I've moved onto vb.net, I've written a simple "Hello, world" application but I have absolutely no idea on how to make it look like the Windows 7 theme (eg. the font matches the system font and the widgets are styled correctly).
Just changing the font is a hack and will look out of place on machines that are set-up differently or run a different version of Windows where the default font is different.
How do I ensure my application matches the applied Windows theme irrespective of the version of Windows?
A lot of this is automatic if you create a Windows Forms app. They will (mostly) use the standard native Windows controls which draw themselves with the theme colors. But there are exceptions:
the Form item template uses a default Font named Microsoft Sans Serif. You'll have to change it to Segoe UI to match the Vista/Win7 default. This is only necessary for the Form class, all controls you put on it will automatically inherit that font. On an XP machine, the Windows font mapper will notice that the font is missing and automatically fall back to MSS.
the MenuStrip class uses custom rendering to draw the menu items. It tries to match the Windows style when you change the RenderMode property to System but the way it draws doesn't match the Win7 style. Right-click the toolbox, Choose Items and select MainMenu. That's a legacy version that does use Windows to draw menus so it produces the proper theme appearance.
A very similar problem for ToolStrip. It's legacy version is ToolBar. This is a hard one to swallow, it doesn't use a rebar which make the tool bar look flat and ugly.
There are similar problems in WPF but with the added problem that WPF doesn't use any of the standard Windows controls. And gets it wrong in subtle places.

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