Keys, characters and language

Sometimes it's all in how we say something that makes the difference. Isn't that what we're always told? Well, how we say even sometime simple like "Yes" can make a big difference. You're probably thinking of the tone we use, or the look we give when we say it, but I'm not talking about any of that. The letters that compose that word are different for each language that you say it in. Sometimes that's an issue, sometimes it's not.

Unfortunately in HighTest's case, it does make a difference. Yesterday, a customer came to us and said that they were trying to input some non-English characters such as ç and HighTest was not very happy with that. The source of the problem is deeply rooted in HighTest's roots. When we first started developing this tool in 1992, the thought that HighTest might be used around the world and be easily accessible via the internet wasn't even a consideration. So to make HighTest as lean and mean as possible (and that's still our goal), they only included support for English, a choice that was fine then, but has come back to bite us since then.

With a little research, it turns out that providing you have the correct input language and keyboard set, HighTest is very happy playing back the characters in question. The issue that we did find, is that the support for only English that I mentioned before causes issues if you want to edit a script with non-English characters in it. HighTest is not very happy with those characters and kicks them back as invalid.

The good news is that it appears that with not much effort, we can make HighTest support just about any single-byte character set. The only issue I see offhand is how to deal with recording dead characters that result in a different character when the second key is pressed. Hopefully that won't be much of an issue and we can resolve that and get much improved international character support.

If you have any insights, we would like to hear them. Just email us at support@vtsoft.com. We're always looking for suggestions on how to speed development and add some of the more difficult features to HighTest.

Keep your eye on this blog. If things go as planned, we may have some updates that you can test out with your target language to make sure that we have the bases covered. That way we can be sure that the updates work for everyone.

Have a wonderful Tuesday! I'll chat with you later.

Ongoing development

As you may have guessed, work is continuing on the next release of HighTest. This has been a much longer and more complicated cycle than we had anticipated due to the issues surrounding Vista and the UAC (User Access Control) security that is built into it.

We have been working at resolving the issues, but because HighTest uses Windows hooks, getting them to work under Vista has not been a walk in the park. If you have any insights into this process, send them to us at Support@vtsoft.com and you will have our eternal gratitude.

Of course, Vista compatibility is not the only enhancement in the works. Maybe, just maybe, some details of the additional new features will leak out as we go along here, but I can't make any promises, except that there are some significant new features that I think you will love. You have been asking for some of these features for a long time and we have finally put them in.

If you would like a preview of the new features in HighTest before the rest of the world, sign up to be a beta tester and as soon as we enter the beta process, we'll contact you regarding your interest in being involved. We'll have more to say about this in the future, so stay tuned!

If you have new features you would like to see in HighTest, we are always wanting to hear from you. Just send your feature requests to Support@vtsoft.com and we will add them to our suggestion list. The more a request is made (by different people, of course), the sooner you might see that feature.

Let's Get This Party Started!

Welcome to the Vermont HighTest Plus blog. In this area, we hope to be able to provide you with tips, techniques and answers to frequently asked questions and maybe give you a preview or two of upcoming releases of HighTest. If you're new to HighTest, or a seasoned veteran, you should find something of use for you in this area.

Your comments and questions are welcome. This is for you and with your help, this will be a worthwhile venture.

Rich.