Question marks everywhere

[adiee5]

How to fix those text labels, where are those string stored in the code (i haven't built it, i downloaded from releases) or at least what do they mean

[lwu309]

Technical details

Why is this happening?

This is because ANSI version of Windows API functions are used. It is a must in order to keep compatibility with Windows 9x, which exists in the 32-bit binary release.

When using ANSI version of Windows API functions, Unicode text stored in resources are converted to the text encoding of the current codepage of your Windows environment before they are displayed. Only characters supported by your current codepage can be displayed properly, the rest are converted to question marks (?).

The question marks in your snapshot are Japanese kana and kanji characters, which are unsupported in Windows-1252 and other Latin-1 compliant codepages. Therefore they are all converted to question marks.

How to fix it?

This can be fixed by changing the Windows API functions in the source code to their Unicode versions and building a binary without Windows 9x support. I may build one some day and put it under the release.

In this case UnicoWS can be used to preserve Windows 9x support but it is not perfect. Font support on Windows 9x is tailored to only what its codepage (depending on Windows language) supports. Those characters are still unable to be displayed properly if the system does not contain Japanese fonts.

What do they mean?

The texts in your snapshot are defined in the resource file:

Scmpoo/Scmpoo/Scmpoo.rc

Lines 19 to 32 in 6ea03ec

	107 DIALOG MOVEABLE PURE 0, 0, 149, 83
	STYLE DS_SETFONT | DS_MODALFRAME | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | WS_SYSMENU
	CAPTION "Screen Mate ポーの設定"
	FONT 9, "ＭＳ Ｐゴシック"
	BEGIN
	CONTROL "OK", IDOK, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON, 92, 7, 50, 14
	CONTROL "ｷｬﾝｾﾙ", IDCANCEL, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_PUSHBUTTON, 92, 25, 50, 14
	CONTROL "&Help", IDRETRY, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_PUSHBUTTON, 92, 43, 50, 14
	CONTROL "終了", IDABORT, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_PUSHBUTTON, 92, 61, 50, 14
	CONTROL "泣き声", 1002, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_AUTOCHECKBOX, 7, 7, 57, 10
	CONTROL "時報をならす", 1001, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_AUTOCHECKBOX, 7, 23, 69, 10
	CONTROL "常に動く", 1003, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_AUTOCHECKBOX, 7, 39, 57, 10
	CONTROL "常に重力が有効", 1004, "BUTTON", WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP | BS_AUTOCHECKBOX, 7, 56, 74, 10
	END

Here is a brief translation:

Caption

Japanese	English
Screen Mate ポーの設定	Screen Mate Poe settings

Checkboxes

Japanese	English
泣き声	Crying voice
時報をならす	Hourly chime
常に動く	Always moving
常に重力が有効	Gravity always enabled

Buttons

Japanese	English
OK	OK
ｷｬﾝｾﾙ	Cancel
Help	Help
終了	Exit