INFO: Japanese Font Problem with Some Visual Basic Applications on Windows 2000 (300710)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio, Enterprise Edition 6.0, when used with:
    • the operating system: Microsoft Windows 2000

This article was previously published under Q300710

SUMMARY

Some of the existing Visual Basic applications display Japanese characters correctly on a Japanese Microsoft Windows 95-based computer, a Microsoft Windows 98-based computer and a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0-based computer. However, the Visual Basic application may show garbled text in the forms when the application is migrated to a Microsoft Windows 2000-based computer.

CAUSE

This problem is most likely to occur when the font in the Visual Basic application is not set correctly. To display Japanese characters on a Windows 2000-based computer, you must set both the font name and font charset properties correctly.

MORE INFORMATION

Because the Japanese fonts MS Mincho and MS Gothic on Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0-based computers only support the shift_JIS charset, any other charset that is specified in the Visual Basic application is replaced by shift_JIS at run-time. So, an application can still display Japanese characters on those Japanese platforms even if the charset property of the font is not set correctly (the default is to ANSI in most cases). On a Windows 2000-based computer, the Japanese fonts support multi-charsets, and the charset property remains as specified in the Visual Basic application. Therefore, the same application may have a problem displaying Japanese characters on a Windows 2000-based computer. To avoid this display problem, you must explicitly set the charset to shift_JIS (128).

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:8/15/2005
Keywords:kbDSXGlobal2003Swept kbDBCS kbFont kbinfo kbLocalization KB300710