Lao Language in Dynamics NAV

josephdewey

Has anyone successfully configured the Lao (Laos, Laotian) language to work with NAV?

We're on Windows Server 2008, with NAV 2009 Classic, and it seems that there are ANSI code pages for every language except for Lao. We're successfully running Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and a bunch of Latin-based languages. A code page seems to exist for every language but Lao.

I found that Microsoft has a solution for Lao with Windows Vista, but I haven't found anything from Microsoft for a Windows server, or Windows 7--just 3rd party add-ons that I would be scared of trying out.

Has anyone else successfully implemented the Lao language with Navision?

Thanks!

josephdewey

I found a solution for this, which is basically to change the default font for Navision. Lao Script for Windows seems to be the most popular solution, and Lao Script is basically just a font (with an input method). So, instead of using a Code Page for the Lao language, like you would with other languages, you use a font which is part of Lao Script, in a similar way as you'd use a codepage. I think Lao Script does this, so they can charge for it, since you need their proprietary input method to enter their font.

It's actually remarkably similar to a codepage, in that each of the characters in the 128-255 range are mapped to a special language character.

Here are the steps:

• Install Lao Script for Windows, http://www.laoscript.net
• Find the .ttf file for the Lao font that you want to use. I used Saysettha Lao Normal.
• Download a font editor to change the name. I used Typograph, http://www.neuber.com/typograph/. You can't just edit the file name, because the font name is also embedded in the font file.
• Rename the Lao font to tahoma.ttf. I suspect that this might be different for various versions of Navision.
• Copy this new tahoma.ttf into the fonts folder to install the font
• Restart the computer for this to take effect.

This isn't a perfect solution, because you probably need to have this on a dedicated NAV machine, just for NAV, with Lao language. Tahoma's a pretty widely-used font, so it will probably make all of your other programs function unpredictably. We solved this by making a dedicated remote server for Lao that users remote into, so this setup only needs to be done on one machine.

I also found the information below on http://dynamicsuser.net/forums/p/25286/137594.aspx , but I think this is for an earlier version of NAV, as it didn't work with NAV 2009 SP1.

It is possible to change the font on all reports. You have to update the windows registry on all client machines. Edit the registry mapping of the Font Helvetica to something else. The key is located here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

then restart the machine.

The other option would be to wait for the Unicode support that's supposed to come out with NAV 2013.

ara3n

You have to take into consideration that next version of NAV supports Unicode and I don't think you will be able to migrate with standard process. you probably have to write some custom data port.


Anybody knows when the NAV 7 beta is going to be released?

josephdewey

This is a good reminder to keep into consideration that it might be a monstrous project to convert all of the ANSI Code Page characters into Unicode, as well as the nonstandard stuff like what I'm doing with Lao.

Hopefully Microsoft has some cool Unicode conversion tools for NAV 2013.