VB Forum / Deployment / June 2008

James Wong <cphk_msdn2@nospam.nospam>'s wild thoughts were
released on Thu, 5 Jun 2008 01:23:06 -0700 bearing the
following fruit:

Then you need to be in a 'dotnet' group. This one is a VB6
group.

J

--
Jan Hyde

https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Jan.Hyde

It is possible to do this using ORCA (Microsofts MSI editor) - but it
is a fairly involved manual process - not something you want to do
everytime you release a new version of a product.  For a ready made
solution you might want to take a look at Infralution's
Globalizer.NET.   It can translate the resources in an MSI and create
a multilingual msi installer package (as well as translating the rest
of your application).  It is much more affordable then purchasing
commercial setup products that allow creation of multilingual
installers.  You can get more information and download a trial version
from:

www.infralution.com/globalizer.html

Regards
Grant Frisken
Infralution

Hi James,

Thank you for posting!

I noticed that you post a same issue in the microsoft.public.vsnet.general
newsgroup. I have replied to that thread and if you have any question about
this particular issue, please reply to that thread and I will follow up
with you in time.

In addition, please post MSI related issues in the
microsoft.public.platformsdk.msi newsgroup in the future and you'll get
help from  Microsoft support as well as experienced communities.

For your convenience, I include my reply here:
================================================================
You can use Database Transforms to localize an MSI package.

A transform is a collection of changes applied to an installation. By
applying a transform to a base installation package, the installer can add
or replace data in the installation database. The installer can only apply
transforms during an installation.

There're three types of transforms. Embedded, secured and unsecured
transforms. All of them could be used with the TRANSFORMS parameter in the
msiexec command: msiexec / i xx.msi TRANSFORMS=xx

Suppose we have two MSI packages and one is for English and the other is
for Chinese. We can create a Database transform containing the delta
between Chinese MSI package and English MSI package. Then we could apply
the transform when installing the English MSI package and the UI is in
Chinese.

When we want to upgade the product, we only need to build an MSI package of
higher version based on the previous Setup project for English and then
apply the existing transform while installing the latest MSI package.

The steps to create and apply a transform:

1. Create a Setup project in VS2005 and add the primary output from a
WinForm application.

2. Select the Setup project in Solution Explorer and switch to Properties
window. Select "English(United States)" for the "Localization" item.

3. Build the Setup project. Copy the resulting .msi file to another path,
e.g. d:\ and rename it "SetupEN.msi".

4. Change the "Localization" property to "Chinese(Simplified)" and build
the Setup project. Copy the resulting .msi file to d:\ and rename it
"SetupCN.msi".

5. Modify the package code of the SetupCN.msi to be same as that of the
SetupEN.msi using Orca. Open the SetupCN.msi with Orca and you can see the
package
code of the MSI file from the menu "View | Summary Information".

6. Use the following VB script code to create a transform between
SetupCN.msi and SetupEN.msi:

option explicit
dim wi, basedb, newdb
const msiTransformValidationLanguage = 1
const msiTransformErrorNone = 0
set wi = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
set basedb = wi.opendatabase("SetupEN.msi", 0)
set newdb = wi.opendatabase ("SetupCN.msi", 0)
newdb.GenerateTransform basedb, "thetransform.mst"
newdb.CreateTransformSummaryInfo basedb, "thetransform.mst",
msiTransformErrorNone, msiTransformValidationLanguage
set wi=Nothing

You may paste the above code to Notepad and save it as a .vbs file.
Double-click the .vbs file to run it.

7. Type the following command line to apply the resulting transform while
installing the SetupEN.msi:
msiexec /i SetupEN.msi TRANSFORMS=thetransform.mst

You can create an executable that displays a dialog for the user to select
language and then apply the corresponding transform while installing the
English verison MSI package.
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