When it comes to desktop software, normally I'm quite picky and tend to get frustrated easily. For example, my graphic-creation workflow is fairly unique because the "normal" path (Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator) is painful for me. Firefox doesn't behave exactly how I want it to so I use Mozilla instead. Most RSS aggregators I've tried have too much bloat, but NewsGator is pure integrated-directly-into-Outlook bliss, etc...
Anyway, hopefully you get the idea — I really have an incredibly low tolerance for badly designed or engineered software. There are only a few very rare cases where I haven't uninstalled something that's upset me, but that's only because I'm forced to use it, no matter how bad it may be. Yes, I'm talking about you, iTunes... Grrrr. :x
The software I use to burn CDs and DVDs is a little German program by the name of Nero: Burning ROM. For a little bit of trivia, it is actually one of Germany's most famous and popular exports, after Mercedes Benz and the David Hasselhoff fan. Fact.
I've been using Nero for at least 8-9 years now, so all the stuff I mentioned above is a sort of testament to Nero. Having used the software for such a long time (and over so many revisions), the fact it hasn't managed to piss me off yet is amazing.
Well, that's not entirely true — Nero has pissed me off once...
A few months ago I came across a problem in Nero (a bug or an oversight, I don't know). Despite my best efforts, Google didn't present a solution but it turns out a lot of other people have also run into the same problem (and the same brick wall). I eventually solved the issue so I'm posting it up here on Pants in the hopes that Google will send people in the right direction to get the answer. Infact, this may actually be the first useful update in the history of the site...!
It turns out that even though the Joliet file system and the software both support it, you cannot (easily) burn files with
Unicode filenames using Nero. What this means is that if you have files with Japanese characters in the name, or Chinese characters, or even if you have files with funky dîãċŗĭtĩčş somewhere, you'll have trouble burning them to CD in Nero.
As demonstrated by the crude animation to the right, when you add Unicode files to a Nero compilation, the files and/or folders are added but the filenames are not retained. Not only that, but you can't even proceed to burn the disc because the compilation has errors.
Some of the common "solutions" I've found on messageboards suggest I should either:
- Rename the files
- Try using <different product> instead
- Find, purchase and install a non-English version of Windows, or
- Use Linux
Renaming the files is obvious but should be unnecessary. Using Linux or a second Windows installation seems like overkill, and all the other burning programs I've tried have the same inability to handle Unicode filenames. But alas, there is another solution to the problem...
It seems so simple really... Here is how I can burn Japanese files using Nero:
- Open the Control Panel.
- Select Regional and Language Options.
- Go to the Advanced tab.
- Under the first group (Language for non-Unicode programs), change the drop-down selection from "English (Australia)" to "Japanese".
- Press OK.
You'll be asked to reboot your machine.
Now here's where it gets interesting... You'd think it's just a matter of starting up Nero and that's it, but there's a bit more to do first:
- Once your machine has rebooted, open Nero.
- When you are prompted to create a new CD/DVD compilation, go to the ISO tab.
- From the Character Set (ISO) drop-down menu, select "Multibyte" from the list.
- Press New to create the compilation.
- Add the desired Unicode files to the compilation, then burn!
Although the method above works, it's kinda dodgy for two reasons.
Firstly, the "Multibyte" character set option (step #8) only exists when Nero is running in non-English mode. Why they've done this I have absolutely no idea, but if you're like most people and running Nero in 'English' mode, then you'll only see three character sets instead of four. This is incredibly stupid.
The second problem is that just like Nero doesn't behave when it's running in 'English' mode, you'll probably find that many normal programs you commonly use start behaving strangely when Windows is half-running in 'Japanese' mode (from step #4 above). Fonts and interfaces will display incorrectly, certain dialog windows will contain only Japanese text, and some programs will immediately crash back to the desktop when you start them.
The only way to avoid seeing these problems is to return Windows back to full 'English' mode by following steps #1 through #5 again, which means you'll need to reboot again too. If you're happy to sit through two reboots just to burn a CD, good for you. Personally, my machine stays on 24/7 and normally goes a couple of months between reboots, so I didn't really want this hiccup interfering with my setup. What I needed was a slightly different solution...
By freaky coincidence, I stumbled across this last puzzle piece by accident while I was researching entirely different things... It turns out Microsoft have released a program called
AppLocale, which allows you to run individual programs under alternate language settings without upsetting other programs or requiring a reboot.
Thanks to this, I am able to run Nero in non-English mode when I need to burn Japanese files but I can still keep the rest of Windows in its native/default language (English) and more importantly, now I don't need to restart my machine just to burn a disc. Here's how it's done:
- Download and install the AppLocale program from Microsoft. (~1.3mb)
Or here's the direct download link to bypass their stupid WGA validation crap.
- Start the AppLocale program.
- The first step will be to choose the program you wish to run. Browse to where Nero is installed and select "Nero.exe" from the Core subfolder.
- Next, choose the desired language to run Nero under. In my case (pictured right) I've chosen Japanese language settings, which was listed at the bottom of the drop-down menu.
- The last step lets you make a shortcut to always start Nero in this language (if you use it often). Click Finish to start Nero.
- Follow the Character Set instructions from steps #7 through #10 above.
If anyone finds these instructions useful, feel free to let me know or more importantly, let the Nero developers know that just because English is your primary language, it doesn't automatically mean that you'll only ever be burning files with "standard" filenames.
After all, the entire point of the Unicode standard was to allow software to become multilingual-aware. At the moment Nero isn't quite 100% there yet, but they may fix it if people bug them. :)
: Nero: Burning ROM or Burning WRONG?
If memory serves me right her 'percentage-of-site' figure peaked at around 27%, but if you check the figure right at this moment you'll notice it's a lot lower than that now — this is partly due to the fact that the site has become a lot larger, but it's primarily due to the fact that her career started to self-implode in quite spectacular fashion.
I don't know about you, but whenever I need privacy the first thing that comes to mind isn't