Swedish "umlaut" characters åäö import problem from gedcom

[andreas1974]

I'm trying to import a gedcom file into Genbox Family History, from another (Swedish) genealogy program called Disgen.

First I exported a GEDCOM file of three persons manually written into Genbox Family History, just to see what format the Swedish characters åäö looked like - that is: to decide what format Genbox would expect (there were several export choices in Disgen).

In the GEDCOM file exported from Genbox, I saw that the character "ä" was exported as "èa". This was also the case when selecting to export to the default gedcom 5.5 ANSEL format from the Swedish program. The character "ä" became "èa" in that file as well.

However, importing any of these files into Genbox results in an "a" directly followed by an empty square symbol. Genbox was not even able to import the small test file I exported from Genbox, with the Swedish characters kept intact.

Some of these characters are frequent in German as well, sometimes referred to as characters with umlaut. I guess there must be many persons with the same need, to import data with foreign characters, from other programs, into Genbox Family History. Is there a solution to this problem?

Best regards,
Andreas Jansson
Sweden

[andreas1974]

Is the GEDCOM import not functional for other languages than English?
Is there no solution to this?

[gthorud]

I have tried the same import and export with ANSEL as you describe and the special Swedish characters are exported
and imported correctly here, also the German ü.

[gthorud]

Forgot to mention that I checked the character encoding in the Gedcom file against an ANSEL encoding table and it is correct.

[andreas1974]

That's so strange. I tested so many ways, but could not get it right, not even exporting from Genbox and importing that same file as a new database.
What version of Genbox Family History did you use? I used the trial version, which was version "3.7.1 U" (which has now expired - makes it harder for me to test more, will have to find another computer).

[gthorud]

I tested with the same version of GB on Vista (Norwegian version).

There are no settings re. character encoding that can be set on import, so it is difficult to make any mistakes.
You can only change it on export.

If you have preserved the Gedcom file, you could zip it, and send it to me - and I will import it.
Jeg treffes på geir punktum thorud på getmail punktum no

[andreas1974]

Geir helped me and tested the GEDCOM files, and it worked. The characters showed up correctly on his screen. He is running a norwegian installation of Windows Vista.

I also link to an image here, that I sent to Geir by mail, an image showing the error:
[img]http://www.tärby.se/gedcom.png[/img] (obviously the forum code does not support åäö in URL:s, but paste it into the address field of FireFox or any browser not too old, to have a look) -image removed

The computers that I tested on first where an English installation of Win2000 and an English installation of Win XP, with a Swedish input locale and keyboard layout selected (which should be the thing to determine preferred language rather than the program language of Windows).

I have later tested to import the same GEDCOM files on a computer with a Swedish installation of Windows XP, at my parents place, and there it worked too. The åäö characters showed up nicely!

Today I also discovered the presense of an "output language flag" in the bottom right corner of the program. Does that setting affect how Swedish characters get imported? Since my 30 days trial is past since a long time I can no longer import files, so I can not test this in a good manner.

Best regards,
Andreas Jansson

[andreas1974]

At my parents computer (WinXP Swedish) now. Switching over output language to English makes no difference (it still works fine, importing the Gedcom file here).
I can find no explanation to why importing åäö characters results in squares on my win2000 English windows.

I've sent sample files to Bill.

[andreas1974]

The explanation to this error lies in the language of the operating system installed.

Swedish installation of Windows = No problems importing Swedish characters into Genbox Family History.

Genbox Family History obviously uses the wrong variable to decide encoding for data import:

For many years, I've only used English Windows (and so do many programmers, since error messages translated into Swedish are almost impossible to get information about).

Windows has two separate "parameters" for language:
1. One is the "Display language". The language of built-in texts in you see in menus, windows and operating system programs and messages.
2. The other one is the "Input language" that the user choose for entering data. This is also known as the keyboard layout.

The first one is normally installed with the Operating System and not possible to affect without re-installing Windows. Although later versions of windows, such as "Windows 7 Ultimate", has now got an option to download language packs, and change this language as well.

As I understand it, Genbox Family History in some way makes use of the "Display Language" of Windows, when importing. This results in errors for users running Windows on another language than their "Input Language".

Best regards,
Andreas