Is any one using BaaN in Chinese screens and entering data in chinese, how does it work?:)

Dear Abuibra,

Wow, never seen one. But I know a company who did quite a few B4 implementations in China. Seems like the users are fine with English version of B4 :)

Rgds,
Paul

Hi there,

actually chinese users are normally not at all fine with english, because a majority over there does not feel so comnfortable with english. Anyway, even, if you work in english, you might need to write adresses and so on in chinese letters. Also some official papers might need to be in chinese.

I was involved in one Baan implementation in china and we solved some problems. I do not have the time rigt now, but if you send me a line with your actual questions, then I will send you an email next week!!

Regards

Markus

Hi,

we have an instalaltion of BaaN IVc4 in China and it works fine.
We have to languages (English and Chinese) which are linked to different users.
It looks quite funny, but we did not encounter any problems with this multibyte installation.

Regards
Muetze

Muetze,

Can you give me more details on:

1. Can the users enter data in Chinese?

2. Can the users print reports in English?

3. Are the screens in Chinese & english or Chinese Only?

4. Were the Translation Sessions used to convert things into Chinese?

5. And any more tips which are diffrent to the normal BaaN.

Thanks

I can't speak for Chinese but we have Japanese and it works great. The key was to install everything (Operating System, Database, Baan) as multibyte even though we mostly use English language.

Data can be entered in English and Chinese. As long as you have
a chinese character set on your pc you also can see what has been entered in chinese.
Of course both languages (English and Chinese) have to be installed and the database should be able to handle mulitbyte functionality.
The user can print usually in his language, but if there is e.g. a customer who needs the documents in english, maiwenti (no problem).
The same is for japanese where we also an installation of BaaN and as far as the language is concerned there are now major problems.
On tip use the right consultants which will help you with the installation and the training !!!

Regards
Mütze

I should also point out that in our situation, the original install was not multibyte and there was attempt to make it so after the fact but this was not possible. I would recommend a clean install of all areas on your server (OS, Database, Baan) to ensure that everything is multibyte. Also be advised that Baan Support was of very little help in solving our issues with Japanese (but that may have changed). Hope you have better luck thatn we did:)

Evertsen,

Can you please explain what you mean by multibyte?

Thanks,

I am referring to the ability to handle multibyte characters, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc. You have install the fonts on your OS, install the multibyte version of your database and answer Yes to the question "Multibyte Yes/No" during the Baan install.

Hi Ev,

I see that you are using oracle on HP-Ux. This is excactly our platform. So I am curious:

In Oracle and Baan the meaning of multibyte is clear, but for HP-Ux?

HP-Ux is in itself not a multibyte OS and I think, there is no multibyte version (apart from a special japenese version maybe).

So do these fonts exist for a normal english HP-Ux?

Where do you get them from?

Do you have any idea, what they are used for, if the bshell only handles the tss codes and the windows gui is actually displaying the fonts?


Answers to these questions would help me a lot, because we are looking for the correct konfiguration for a rollout in china ...

Thanks

Markus

You are correct that there is not a multibyte setting for HP-UX but you have to add support for Chinese. We had to install the "Japanese Language support Libraries" (available from HP; I assume there is a Chinese version). This had to be done before the installation of Oracle/Baan.

What is difference on database and OS of selection between Native and TSS when installation?

I know baan process the multi-byte character internally by TSS. but there is no tss information in database(Oracle/NT, SQL Server/NT).

I heard that the English version of BaanIVc4 have a few of different Baan tools object with Baan IVc4 Chinese Version. This made the Baan IVc4 English version is not compatible with multibyte version. Is there any workarount to make them compatible?

Originally posted by frankbing
What is difference on database and OS of selection between Native and TSS when installation?

I know baan process the multi-byte character internally by TSS. but there is no tss information in database(Oracle/NT, SQL Server/NT).

I heard that the English version of BaanIVc4 have a few of different Baan tools object with Baan IVc4 Chinese Version. This made the Baan IVc4 English version is not compatible with multibyte version. Is there any workarount to make them compatible?

1) Select TSS mean you will store TSS code in your DB.
Native means code in your Chatset will be stored in DB.
For example, if you select TSS and use Japanese Version, your DB will have char type column like '9b21+SHIFTJIS Code 2 bytes' when you DB Charset is SHIFTJIS, if you select native, it became 'SHIFTJIS Code 2 bytes' only

2) Baan use TSS internal, in common case, not in DB. Baan translate the DB data into TSS code and also turn it back before it reach BW.

3)I think that different is due to the media difference. There should not have any difference between language.You can use Multibyte under Eglish Version .

Multibyte Version Installation for Windows and Unix are different.

For Unix like system, English Version media can be multibyte-enabled if you select multibyte-enable option in installation process. It is mean you can use multi-byte language in this system, but since it is English Version ,you did not have any ,for example Chinese labels, messages, so your user interface is still in English. Any way, you need to add on language 'o' if you use Chinese.

for Windows system, there are no Multi-byte enable option there. The best way is install Multibyte Version, it can be multi-byte enabled also after you installed the system, but it is not stable. There is a session to change multi-byte parameter.

Which session? Do you mean ttadv4106m000?

Hi Muetze,

When you said the user can print in both languages, is it from same baan co. , if so how do set it up?
How about the menu and the forms can they also be in chinese?

Thanks

Hi, Abuibra

I'm a consultant of Baan working in big Consulting company, I have one customer with the same configuration of Baan(Oracle DB, Windows NT, And Baan IV c4), They are using the Chinese enviroments in China, It runs very well,

After You install multibyte version of Baan IV C4 (With Chinese Language). The user interface can be English or Chinese(Depends on user settings). You can also input Both chinese and English into the system no matter what your interface are. and You can also print the information both in Chinese and in English with no problem.

If you have any detail problem, you can contact me directly. either from this board or by other means like e-mail or phone. Let me know please.

Hi,

Are there any localization & Customization issues which I should be aware of before installing BaaN in China. And is BaaN Vc working perfectly in Chinese?

Thanks.

Hi,

Is the following situation possible and feasable ?

1. Solaris
2. Oracle
3. Baan ERP 5b / 5c

- Different VRC derived from Stnd, with Global Loc, Chinese loc ( If avail, I have never seen one, though I heard about it some time back), jap loc.

- Three companies with different data

- three diff users with diff languages like Chinese from China, Jap from Japan and the regular user from anywhere in engligs on the same system at the same time working on diff data in diff companies.

I have worked on Eng + Jap, but not all three at the same time. Is it possible for the OS / DB / Baan to handle this ?

Regards
Max:confused:

Should be no problem! As long as you don't want intercompany transactions. Although this might be solved with exchange or something like that.

Originally posted by maximus
Hi,

Is the following situation possible and feasable ?

1. Solaris
2. Oracle
3. Baan ERP 5b / 5c

- Different VRC derived from Stnd, with Global Loc, Chinese loc ( If avail, I have never seen one, though I heard about it some time back), jap loc.

- Three companies with different data

- three diff users with diff languages like Chinese from China, Jap from Japan and the regular user from anywhere in engligs on the same system at the same time working on diff data in diff companies.

I have worked on Eng + Jap, but not all three at the same time. Is it possible for the OS / DB / Baan to handle this ?

Regards
Max:confused:


It is impossible.
Baan can handle oracle DB with one charset. This charset only can be Chinese or Japanes, not both.

To explain this, see this example,
Japanese -----> Shiftjis (this is much more popular) / EUCJP
Chinese ------>GB2312 (Simplified Chinese)/BIG(Traditional Chinese)

code 0x88a4 in Japanese , it is a Japanese character, but in Chinese, for the same code , there is another Chinese character. All 2-byte character(Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean), all those charset have some duplicated code for different Characters.
No big charset including all these code like unidode, so you can not use them together.

For why not use unicode for all these languages, the reason is Baan did not support unicode DB.

Why you can use English + Japanese, is because, for ascii code, Japanese has the almost same ascii code as ISO8859-1, except something like '\', in Japanese, it is a Japanese Yen mark.

And for the same reason, something like Germany+Chinese/Japanese is also impossible.

About NvanBeest's idea,yes, there are some free programs for GB2312-80/SHIFTJIS code exchange, and also for other like BIG5/SHIFTJIS tools, to convert your GB2312 encode text file to SHIFTJIS encode file. If you want to make a Multi-site with a batch solution, for example exchange the invoice from Chinese to Japanese, that maybe possible, in fact, this is maybe the best idea for multi-site between multibyte languages.

You also can set different company & different user with different charset like 1 in Japanese and 1 in Chinese, but for tools , there is only 1 company, everything from company 000 will make a mass.

I did a test before, setup a Multi-site for Chinese + Japanese,
they all have there own tools company, 2 BAANIVc4 share 1 finance company, and only input English. that is very funny, you can see the interface in Japanese or Chinese, but no way to input, nobody will need it.

Originally posted by Abuibra
Hi,

Are there any localization & Customization issues which I should be aware of before installing BaaN in China. And is BaaN Vc working perfectly in Chinese?

Thanks.

Nothing is really different from single byte.If you got the Baan product, you will also get the Country specific notes inside, that is just very clear for installation.

Know excatly the locale may help.
For Baan(GB2312), DB(Oralce NLS_LANG=*****ZHS16CGB231280
), BW(GB2312)
And make sure about your server machine,
for example, if it is a solaris, make sure language support is already installed, you can use OS locale like LANG=zh
if you use English version windows, please confirm you already installed the language pack.

By the way, Baan V Chinese version seems still not realesed yet.

Hi,

What I made out from your post is the following, please check if I am correct.

1. Sun OS is loaded with Jap + Chinese character support, english will be present by default.

2.One oracle instance with 2 db for diff languages

3.Two baan environments ref to same licence node, but ref to diff tools + data companies ? I did not understand this part very clearly though. Is it possible to create this situation ?

If the above is not possible, let have a discussion , where we may provide for Jap + Chinese, diff VRC for both, diff data company for both. thats the basic requirement as only one server is available.

Regards
Max

Steps 1 and 2 are correct.

As far as I know, step 3 can be changed to the following:

One Baan environment, two db's declared in tools, two VRC structures and package combinations, Jap company assigned to one PC and db, and Chinese company assigned to the other PC and db.

Having only the one Baan environment simplifies the maintenance. Since all labels and texts in Tools are language bound in the tables, I can see no reason why there should be two Tools companies. But this is where I might be wrong:(.

I would actually advise you to use two seperate BSE. Here are my reasons:

a) the licensing isuue is easy, just put the same entry in the licence6.1 file.

b) If you have different requirements for downtimes (due to time zones, working hours, public holidays), then you reduce your available offline slots, by merging the two BAANs.

c) Do not mix, what Baan has not tested. The chinese Baan is supported by china nd the japenese Baan is supported by Baan in somewhere else. The people in china never tested your combination and will not be able or willing to help you with problems.

Enjoy your adventure,

Markus

I will give it a shot, and get back with results in some time.

Regards
Max

Originally posted by NvanBeest
Steps 1 and 2 are correct.

As far as I know, step 3 can be changed to the following:

One Baan environment, two db's declared in tools, two VRC structures and package combinations, Jap company assigned to one PC and db, and Chinese company assigned to the other PC and db.

Having only the one Baan environment simplifies the maintenance. Since all labels and texts in Tools are language bound in the tables, I can see no reason why there should be two Tools companies. But this is where I might be wrong:(.

Yes, the situation is just like this

Baan can not support Japanese+Chinese.

My test is for this situation, user can user their own interface in Chinese or Japanese, but they can only input English (ISO-8859-1).

(1)Install Japanese Baan, Oracle DB charset JA16SJIS
(2)Install Chinese Baan, Oracle DB charset ZHS16CGB231280
(3)Make this 2 Baan share a company other than 000.

why need 2 tools companies, because as you know, Baan save label in tables and read out according to language code. Image you save both Japanese(language j), Simlpified Chinese(language o), than you need a DB table support both these 2 charset, right? that is impossible, no Charset include JA16SJIS + ZHS16CGB231280.

By the way, maximus, you can send me email for those multibyte issues.

Anyone have any idea when Chinese for Baan 5c will be available? I hear maybe the end of the month and as far out as Nov. of this year.. Just wanted to try to nail the availablity date. Thanks.

Frank

Required System for Japanese & Chinese character support

- It is required that the user be able to enter the data in either language depending on his client configuration (Japanese, Chinese or English).

- The client interface should display the GUI components like labels, message, form text etc according to the client configuration.

- The data entered in different languages is stored in the same oracle database.

- It is also requested that the different users should be able to enter data in different languages for the same record at mutually exclusive times. For example, a Japanese user enters first 5 characters for item description, then the Chinese user login later and enters the next five characters in Chinese, and later the English user enters the remaining characters in English. The idea behind this is that the individual language users will be able to see at least their part of the data in their language correctly.

- After the installation of the Chinese localization, the above functionality should remain same for the 2 separate environments created, one for the Japanese localization and the other for Chinese localization.

We have one unix box with sun / oracle installed for japanese. We need to keep only one environment.

Is this possible ? I am also writing to baan support asking their ideas in this.

Let your great mind free and then think about this. I have exausted all possiblities from my side.

Thanks in advance.
Regards
Max