Foreign downloads.

[Tonysmedley]

I recently experienced problems when I was getting error messages about missing or unreadable files for some recently downloaded rolling stock; these caused MSTS to freeze.
On close inspection some foreign letters not in the standard English alphabet were not correctly reproduced in the names of files. For example a German 'u' with an umlaut looked to be correct but was in fact another similar but different character.
The solution is to got to Windows>Control Panel>Regional and Language Options>Languages and ensure that the foreign language is amongst those available in your PC set up. Enabling German(Germany) solved the problem. If a download is in another language a similar solution may be necessary.

[CaptainBazza]

Thanks Tony, a useful addition to the knowledgebank, so I've stickied the thread.

Cheers Bazza

[alanch]

Yes - I've had similar problems with French and Danish stock, solved in the same way.

[USRailFan]

Still tho, the best solution IMO would be for the creators of such rolling stock to stay away from "custom" characters and letters.

[peteworsley]

..and use American English?

PW

[alanch]

Why would a Swede or a Dane or a German or a French citizen abandon their own alphabet, which will be installed on their computer, courtesy of Microsoft - we will have to adapt, not them!

[steamnut44]

Why would a Swede or a Dane or a German or a French citizen abandon their own alphabet, which will be installed on their computer, courtesy of Microsoft - we will have to adapt, not them!

The European Commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceeded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phased plan, for what will be known as, Euro English (Euro for short).

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy! Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up any konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publk enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the third year publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double leters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e's" in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go!

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps sush as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v".

During ze fifz year ze unesasary "o" kan be droped from verds kontaining "ou" and similar shanges vud of kors be aplied to difikult vords and evryon vil find it ezi to understand ech uzer.

It vud be advantagus if ve mad a habit of adopting Euro in ur privat lif in order to be on step ahead of ozer europeans by 2008

As long as it doesn't go this far, we should be ok.

Geoff

[alanch]

I thought texting had gone half towards this already!

[steamnut44]

I thought texting had gone half towards this already!

You could be right there, Alan.

[craigals]

Sounds like the germans to me

[craigals]

It vud be beter if ve kud al understand vat zey men eh?

[OliverNo11]

Oh my god... that sounds just like what the kids at school write...we will all have bad german accents by 2020!

[johncas]

If your german or french and making an add-on you use your own language not all germans speed or know english can't expect them to learn english just for our sake if I was german and downloaded something from uktrainsim I would not be able to read English without putting the read-me file through the online translator

[alan2]

the bad thing about the above sentance (euro) was that by the end I was reading it quite easily, where by when I read the last line first it looked like jibberish.

[thenudehamster]

Going back to the original point, Tony's is a worthwhile suggestion; of course, trying to identify the relevant keys is a different matter...
As for 'foreign' uploaders changing their filenames into English, might I point out that WE are foreign to THEM?

However, there is the observation that English, in its many dialects, is almost the only language which does not habitually use accented characters or gender variations - and is becoming the de facto international standard language. It's interesting to note that pretty well all countries which have English as their first language are reluctant to learn any other, while almost every other language culture chooses English as it's first-choice second language.
I think if non-native English speakers intend their products to be 'marketed' to an international audience, then using the English alphabet is a good idea - but it's not up to us to force it onto them.