ASA and non-US locales

[trisager 2]

Big lightbulb over my head as I read aua668's (now locked) post about ASA and non-US locale settings. Now I understand why FSBUILD winds usually are completely different from what ASA reports: ASA does not properly handle non-US locales. When used with my DK settings, the wx_station_list.txt file is stored in an inconsistent format, with both "," and "." used as the decimal separator in different positions. No wonder FSBUILD cannot parse it properly. Presumably this is the case with any locale that uses delimiters different from those used in the US.I understand from the response to aua668 that HIFI has no intention of doing anything about this. The suggested "workaround" is to use the US locale settings with ASA. In my case this is not very practical as I use the laptop running ASA for other purposes, so the "workaround" requires me to change locale settings every time I want to use ASA with FSBUILD. Not good enough, frankly.

[Guest ipogato]

In fact. It seems that this is coming a quite diffuse problem. Anyway in the next days I'll check if changing my Italian settings brings to problems in the pc. Otherwise, we'll have to switch to English any time we want to use AS and Fsbuild. And I agree with you, it is not very practical.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I also have both... FSBuild and ASA... workaround is not an option.. this is not freeware.

[trisager 2]

I can see that nothing has changed with ASE - use of "." and "," is still inconsistent in the wx_station_list.txt file if you happen to live in a country that uses "," as the decimal separator.International users beware: Data export to FSBuild does not work properly unless you are willing to change to the US language setting while running ASE.

[aua668 5]

Hi,I really appreciate, that now Hifi has returned back to the old style of proactively adddressing errors by releasing interim hotfixes and testing them interactively with their users. That's what I really missed in the last few months.Maybe you have the chance to look during your debugging sessions at this topic again. If we as international users could get back our old (but working) format again for integration with FSBuild without changing our LOCALE everytime for using ASE, this really would be fine. So please continue your current user-oriented spirit.RgdsReinhard

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,We looked into this a long time back and the programming team did not make any changes to the format of the file since the days of ASv6.5. And this answer comes directly from the programming team, not from me!

[aua668 5]

Jim,Do you believe, that these two files have the identical format? Both have been created on the same machine with LOCALE set to German(Austria) at the same time. The ASV 6.5 format is compatible with FSBuild - the ASE format isn't. Why is it so difficult to accept, that your programmers have changed something? It's obvious, that there is a difference.RgdsReinhardASV6.5AGGH,-9.421,160.052,9,9.1 AGGL,-10.7,165.8,3,10.1 AGGM,-8.32,157.262,2,8.4ASEAGGH,-9,417,160,050,0.0 AGGL,-10,683,165,800,0.0 AGGM,-8,317,157,267,0.0

[ubersu 78]

Jim,Do you believe, that these two files have the identical format? Both have been created on the same machine with LOCALE set to German(Austria) at the same time. The ASV 6.5 format is compatible with FSBuild - the ASE format isn't. Why is it so difficult to accept, that your programmers have changed something? It's obvious, that there is a difference.RgdsReinhardASV6.5AGGH,-9.421,160.052,9,9.1 AGGL,-10.7,165.8,3,10.1 AGGM,-8.32,157.262,2,8.4ASEAGGH,-9,417,160,050,0.0 AGGL,-10,683,165,800,0.0 AGGM,-8,317,157,267,0.0

At the risk of getting into something that I would rather not get into... ASA and ASE are written in .NET 2.0 which doesn't always handle globalization quite as one might expect. It would be worth setting up a Vista machine in the German locale and setting a breakpoint in FixRegionalDecimalString(string) in HiFiUtil.dll to see if it is actually called - it should be fixing up the commas with decimal points. Also be aware that in Vista and Win7 that not all language packs are equal - see Mike Kaplan's blog in MSDN blogs for a lengthy discussion.DJ

[JSkorna 137]

Reinhard,The programming team is made up of one member, Damian. Many years ago I asked him about this and he looked into it and no formatting changes have been made to the format of our file, based on the US settings.If you wish to have FSB work with ASA and/or ASE on your computer you must change the format to US.

[aua668 5]

At the risk of getting into something that I would rather not get into... ASA and ASE are written in .NET 2.0 which doesn't always handle globalization quite as one might expect. It would be worth setting up a Vista machine in the German locale and setting a breakpoint in FixRegionalDecimalString(string) in HiFiUtil.dll to see if it is actually called - it should be fixing up the commas with decimal points. Also be aware that in Vista and Win7 that not all language packs are equal - see Mike Kaplan's blog in MSDN blogs for a lengthy discussion.DJ

Hi DJ,That's exactly what I assumed all the time, that not the programmers (or better: the single programmer Damian) has changed something in the original code, but that underlying libraries have been changed. Libraries which are necessary to produce formatted output of numbers etc.If you look into the sample, then you can see, that in the file produced by ASE the third number uses the decimal point in comparison to the comma in the first two numbers. So somethings isn't clean.So I am totally with you - the underlying libraries are now using LOCALE support - ASV 6.5 has used the same calls but other libraries under the hood. That's exactly what I wanted, that the programmer should check. And in fact they produced a third number in the past, which is now 0.0RgdsReinhard

[aua668 5]

Hi Jim,I looked now even more in detail in my ASV 6.5 installation and I found a detail, which might be of interest for you and Damian. In ASV 6.5 the weather station file was NOT written at every download! This file was statically installed and got updated from time to time with a new build.With ASA/ASE this was changed. The file is updated with the download of the weather. So it possible add or remove weatherstations on the fly.So the major change was, that you introduced this download and writing of the stations file. With ASV 6.5 you just distributed one file with one format to all users independent from their regional settings.And this writing is not consistent in terms of using the LOCALE.Hope this helps to eliminate this problem.RgdsReinhard

[aua668 5]

Hi,For those international users, which want to convert the new weather station file to the old format usable by FSBuild here a short description of a simple method to do this.1) Install SED for Windows from here on your ASE PC2) In your ASE weather directory create a small text file ASE.SED with the following two lines:

s/,/\./4s/,/\./2

3) In your ASE weather directory create a short command file ASE.CMD executing the following two commands:

"C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\sed.exe" -f ASE.SED wx_station_list.txt > <your-fsbuild-ase-directory>\wx_station_list.txtcopy current_wx_snapshot.txt <your-fsbuild-ase-directory>\

You might have to adjust the directory path according to your SED installation4) Configue FSBuild to read from the defined <your-fsbuild-ase-directory> (which should not be the normal ASE directory).The SED file converts the second and fourth comma into a decimal point. So after the initial weather download by ASE you just execute the small CMD file. This will copy the actual station list and the current weather snapshot into your selected FSBuild directory and then you can use the "wind aloft" feature as usual.I know, that you have to execute one additional step, but it's easier, than changing always the regional settings :( And hopefully the flaw in the code will somtimes got fixed.RgdsReinhard