This is an archive of the original scripts.sil.org site, preserved as a historical reference. Some of the content is outdated. Please consult our other sites for more current information: software.sil.org, ScriptSource, FDBP, and silfontdev



Home

Contact Us

General

Initiative B@bel

WSI Guidelines

Encoding

Principles

Unicode

Training

Tutorials

PUA

Conversion

Resources

Utilities

TECkit

Maps

Resources

Input

Principles

Utilities

Tutorials

Resources

Type Design

Principles

Design Tools

Formats

Resources

Font Downloads

Gentium

Doulos

IPA

Rendering

Principles

Technologies

OpenType

Graphite

Resources

Font FAQ

Links

Glossary


Computers & Writing Systems

SIL HOME | SIL SOFTWARE | SUPPORT | DONATE | PRIVACY POLICY

You are here: Encoding > Conversion > Utilities
Short URL: https://scripts.sil.org/EncodingConverters26inst

SIL Converters 2.6 (and 2.6.1) Installation

Kent Spielmann and Bob Eaton, 2008-01-04

Note

This information is also available as a download:

SIL Converters 2.6 Installation
Bob Eaton, 2007-07-02
Download "SILConverters 2.6 Installation Help.pdf", Acrobat PDF document, 146KB [3211 downloads]

Overview

SIL Converters version 2.6 is intended to be installed using the Master setup program found here.

This document is intended to guide you through the Master Installer installation screens and initial SIL Encoding Converters2.6 Setup. This guide may be sufficient for many users. However, to make full use of SIL Encoding Converters 2.6, you should refer to the SIL Encoding Converters documentation.

The Master Setup program runs a series of installers:

  1. Software prerequisites—Necessary system updates and add-ons are installed on your computer.
  2. SIL Encoding Converters2.6 Setup—Conversion applications are installed and conversion Maps and Tables are copied to your hard drive.
  3. SIL Converters for Office 2003—Currently this installer only installs an additional operating system update.
  4. Converter Installer—A utility that allows you to activate the conversion Maps and Tables you want to use.

Installation

If this is the first time you are running the installer, be sure to close all programs before starting the installation program, including the program that you are using to read this document. Several of the software prerequisite sub-installers will stop and tell you to shut down programs.

Suggestion: If this is your first time installing SIL Converters, you may want to print out this document to guide you through the process.

Software prerequisites

These installers may require that you answer some dialog box questions. Be sure to allow these updates and add-ons to be installed; they are necessary for SIL converters to run properly. Several of the software prerequisite programs may stop and tell you to shut down programs you were not even aware were running. Be sure you follow all instructions.

If it seems the installer has stalled, it may be there is a dialog box waiting for you to respond. However, be patient. Some of these installers take several minutes to finish.

SIL Encoding Converters Setup

Overview

This section is intended as a guide for initial setup. For detailed information on the SIL Encoding Converters2.6 Setup see Help for SIL Converters 2.6.

  • You should probably choose all defaults, except if there is a Maps and Tables package that you might want to use.

Tip:

You do not need to know exactly what you want to install the first time you run the Setup program. You can run the Master Setup program again to add or delete components. For more information on the SIL Converters components and features see Help for SIL Converters 2.6.

Installation

  • Welcome screen.
    • Click  Next .
  • Destination folder
    • To use the suggested folder (recommended), click  Next .

For Advanced Users: As many of the components in the SIL Converters suite are shared utilities, the vast majority of the download will be installed in specific, fixed, shared locations. For example, most of the transduction engines are provided by DLL programs which must be in a folder that is in the Windows Path environment variable. For this reason, the TECkit, CC, ICU, Perl, and Python DLLs are put into the C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL folder, which is also added to your system Path variable. However, the majority of the client applications, which otherwise don’t need to be in one of these shared locations (e.g. the Bulk SFM converter, the Clipboard EncConverter, etc), will be installed in the folder which you select from this dialog box.

Select features


This screen allows you to select which conversion applications are installed and which conversion Maps and Tables are copied to your hard drive. Selected Map and Tables will need to be activated using the Converter Installer dialog latter in the installation process.

  • Select Features—Alternatives:
    • To install the most commonly used features and components, click  Next .
    • To install additional font conversion packages:
      • Select any any of the following packages listed under Maps and Tables:
        • FindPhone to IPA converters—converts FindPhone data to IPA93 or Unicode (one way conversion)
        • SAG (India)—converts between legacy SAG encodings and Unicode
        • Cameroon—converts between legacy SIL Cameroon encodings and Unicode
        • Central Africa—converts between legacy SIL Central African encodings and Unicode
        • East Africa—converts between legacy SIL East African encodings and Unicode
        • West Africa—converts between legacy West African encodings and Unicode
        • Eastern Congo Group—converts between legacy ECG encodings and Unicode
        • NLCI (India)—converts between legacy NLCI encodings and Unicode
        • Hebrew—converts between legacy SIL Hebrew encodings and Unicode
        • Indic Converters—converts between various non-SIL legacy Indic encodings and Unicode
        • Papua New Guinea—converts between various legacy PNG encodings and Unicode
      • When you see the popup menu choose Will be installed on local drive.
      • When you have finished selecting any additional Map and Tables, click  Next .
  • Click  Next  again to begin installation.
  • When you see the SIL Encoding Converters 2.6 has been successfully installed message, click  Finish  to continue.

SIL Converters for Office 2003

The SIL Converters for Office 2003 Setup currently only installs a critical operating system update. However, the update is needed by all users, whether or not you have Office 2003.



  • Click  Install .

Tip:

This installer does not check to see if update has already been installed. If you know the update has been installed, you may click  Cancel  and  OK  to skip this installer.

Converter Installer




The Converter Installer allows you to add the converters you want to use to the system repository of your machine. This makes them available to all applications that use Encoding Converters.

  • This selection menu is also permanently available from: Start / Programs / SIL Converters / Launch Converter Options Installer. All conversions currently copied to your hard drive are listed.
    • A gray check indicates conversions that are currently active
    • A dark check indicates conversions that are selected to be activated.
    • No check indicates conversions that are not activated or are selected to be deactivated.
  • Check All: Click this box to cycle between
    • Check All,
    • Clear All, and
    • Show Currently Installed
  • Show Tool Tips: When this box is checked, hovering over the conversion name will display information on the conversion.
    • Select the conversion you want activate. Most users will only use one or two conversions.

Tip:

Do not activate all the converters. Too many active converters will slow down your system considerably, particularly if you are using the Clipboard Encoding Converter application.

  • Click  OK  or  Apply  to activate your selections.
  • Click  Cancel  to finish.

Known issues at release time (for version 2.6.1)

SIL Converters documentation not updated

Since this 2.6.1 release is an intermediate release meant to fix some compatibility problems with FieldWorks and Speech Tools programs, the SIL Converters documentation was not updated for the 2.6.1 release. Therefore any references to version 2.6 in the documentation should be considered as applying to v 2.6.1. This applies especially to the Help for SIL Converters 2.6 and Help for SILConverters 2.6 Installation menu items in Start / All Programs / SIL Converters / Help documents.

CC Unrecognized keyword error



If you see this error message: begin > utf8 ?CC-F-Unrecognized keyword, it means that there is a version of the file cc32.dll somewhere in your Windows Path that is older than the one installed by SIL Converters into the C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL folder. It is best if you delete any older copy of cc32.dll. The existing application which installed it will be able to use the newer version installed by SIL Converters because it is also on the Path.

Alternatives

  • Delete any versions of cc32.dll that may be in your C:WindowsSystem32 and C:LingLinkCellarSmv folders.
  • Do a Search of your hard drive for cc32.dll and delete any versions older than 4/16/2002 (Version 8.1.6).
    • Click Start / Search.
      • Result: A Search Results window opens.
    • In the All or part of file name: drop down box, type or paste: cc32.dll.
    • In the Look in: drop down box, make sure Local Hard Drives appears.
    • Click More advanced options and make sure Search system folders is checked.
    • Click  Search 
      • Result: The search should find cc32.dll in C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL as well as in some other locations on your hard drive.
    • Delete any versions of cc32.dll in folders other than C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL.
      • Warning: If the search finds versions of cc32.dll in .zip or other compressed file folders, you should not try to delete them.

Python 2.5 required for Python script conversions

If you want to use a Python script converter, you must also install a separately-available Python distribution of the same version number.

SILConverters 2.6.1 supports encoding conversions using Python Version 2.5. This means you must have a Python Version 2.5.x. installed on your computer. It will not work with an earlier or later Python version (e.g. 2.4.2 or 2.6.1).

As of this writing,  Python Version 2.5.1 is available for download from  http://www.python.org.

Perl 5.8.8 required for Perl expression conversions

If you want to use a Perl expression converter, you must also install a separately-available Perl distribution of the same version number.

SIL Converters 2.6.1 supports encoding conversions using only Perl Version 5.8.8. It will not work with any other Perl version (e.g. 5.8.7).

The Perl converter has been tested with the following freely available Perl distribution:  ActiveState Perl.

FieldWorks 5.0 Compatibility issues

If you use SIL Encoding Converters 2.6 or earlier versions, the FieldWorks 5.0 installer will automatically uninstall SIL Encoding Converters. This is done to avoid compatibility problems. See the upgrade information which follows.

Upgrading Speech Analyzer and SIL Encoding Converters

If you are using FieldWorks, Speech Analyzer, and/or SIL Converters, you should upgrade them all to avoid eventual conflicts with older versions of the others. If you no longer need one of these products, first remove it, then upgrade to FW 5.0, SA 3.0.1, and/or SIL Converters 2.6.1. The new software is available on the SIL Language Freeware CDs or may be downloaded from:

Technical Details: Old and new versions can be installed and work together normally. However, if you then emun}install any of the programs, it will remove some core encoding converter registry settings that the remaining program(s) depend on. As a result, encoding converters within FW or SA will lose some functionality until the registry settings are restored. Typical error messages may state “Encoding Converter not found” or “Error initializing Document reader”. The problem can be fixed as follows: download or copy RegisterSEC.bat to your hard disk, then execute the batch file while logged in to an administrative user account. On Vista, you must run it by right-clicking the batch file, then selecting ‘Run as Administrator’. RegisterSEC.bat is found on each installation package in the FieldWorks, Speech Analyzer, or Encoding Converters directory. Alternatively, you can fix the problem by rerunning the appropriate installer and choosing the Repair option. For those that know how, you can also fix the problem by using regasm to register SilEncConverters22.dll in c:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL2.6.0.0 or 2.6.1.0.

Vista users upgrading to SILConverters 2.6.1

Non-administrative Vista users may discover that some of their encoding converters, pictures, and media files are no longer available. This is due to Vista’s virtual store ‘feature’. For encoding converters, it is usually simplest to re-add the missing encoding converters.

Technical Details: When a non-administrative Vista user creates a file under Program Files, instead of writing the files under Program Files, the files are created under c:UsersYourLoginNameAppDataLocalVirtualStoreProgram Files where YourLoginName is your Vista login name. If multiple users log on to a machine, there will be multiple copies of these files. FieldWorks 4.9, Speech Analyzer 3.0.1, and SIL Encoding Converters 2.6.1 and later versions no longer write any files under Program Files, so this problem will be avoided. When upgrading from older versions of these programs, user files from Program Files are copied to the new location under c:ProgramDataSIL. However, the installers do not catch files from these virtual directories. If you are missing encoding converters after an upgrade, you should copy the contents from the MappingFiles and Repository folders from your VirtualStoreProgram FilesCommon FilesSIL to similar directories under c:ProgramDataSIL.

Known issues at release time (for version 2.6)

SIL Converters for Word absent if Word not installed.

When you run the installer if you do not have a suitable version of MS Word installed then SIL Converters for Word will be missing from the selection list. This is because SIL Converters for Word cannot be installed without Word already being present.

CC Unrecognized keyword error

CC Error dialog box



If you see this error message: begin > utf8 ?CC-F-Unrecognized keyword, it means that there is a version of the file cc32.dll somewhere in your Windows Path that is older than the one installed by SIL Converters into the C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL folder. It is best if you delete any older copy of cc32.dll. The existing application which installed it will be able to use the newer version installed by SIL Converters because it is also on the Path.

Alternatives

  • Delete any versions of cc32.dll that may be in your C:WindowsSystem32 and C:LingLinkCellarSmv folders.
  • Do a Search of your hard drive for cc32.dll and delete any versions older than 4/16/2002 (Version 8.1.6).
    • Click Start / Search.
      • Result: A Search Results window opens.
    • In the All or part of file name: drop down box, type or paste: cc32.dll.
    • In the Look in: drop down box, make sure Local Hard Drives appears.
    • Click More advanced options and make sure Search system folders is checked.
    • Click  Search 
      • Result: The search should find cc32.dll in C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL as well as in some other locations on your hard drive.
    • Delete any versions of cc32.dll in folders other than C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL.
      • Warning: If the search finds versions of cc32.dll in .zip or other compressed file folders, you should not try to delete them.

Python 2.4 required for Python script conversions

If you want to use a Python script converter, such as 'UnicodeName' (installed when you select the 'Python Script Functions 2.4' transduction engine feature in the SILConverters' installer), you must also install a separately-available Python distribution of the same version number.

SILConverters 2.6 supports encoding conversions using Python Version 2.4. This means you must have a Python Version 2.4.x. installed on your computer. It will not work with an earlier or later Python version (e.g. 2.3.1 or 2.5.2).

As of this writing,  Python Version 2.4.4 is available for download from  http://www.python.org/download/.

Perl 5.8.7 required for Perl expression conversions

If you want to use a Perl expression converter, you must also install a separately-available Perl distribution of the same version number.

SIL Converters 2.6 supports encoding conversions using only Perl Version 5.8.7. It will not work with any other Python version (e.g. 5.8.8). The Perl converter has been tested with the following freely available Perl distributions:  ActiveState Perl or  PXPerl.

The PXPerl 5.8.7 installer may be downloaded here:
PXPerl 5.8.7 installer
PXPerl, 2005-08-23
Download "PXPerl-5.8.7-6.exe", Windows application, 29MB [2175 downloads]

Unable to add converters with PXPerl installed

The PXPerl program inserts its path Path environment variable ahead of the Windows path folders. This causes certain problems (e.g. unable to add an ICU Transliterator from certain SIL Converters’ client applications).

If you have trouble installing some converters, you should follow these steps to rectify this problem:

  • Right-click  My Computer  and choose Properties. Result: The System Properties dialog is displayed.
  • Click the Advanced tab.
  • Click the  Environment Variables  button.
  • In the System variables area, scroll down to and select Path and click the  Edit  button).
  • Move the portion of the path that refers to Perl (e.g. C:PXPerlparrotbin;C:PXPerlbin;) to anywhere after the Windows path folders (i.e. the %SystemRoot%... items).

Tip

Open a text editor like Notepad. Right after clicking Edit, click  CTRL  +  C  to copy the path statement from the Variable Value box of the Edit System Variable dialog window, then paste the path into the text editor. After editing you can paste it back.

Result: When you’re finished, your Path variable should look something like this (though it may be much longer, and there should be no line breaks):

%SystemRoot%system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%System32Wbem;
C:Program FilesCommon FilesSIL;C:PXPerlparrotbin;C:PXPerlbin

© 2003-2024 SIL International, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted elsewhere on this page.
Provided by SIL's Writing Systems Technology team (formerly known as NRSI). Read our Privacy Policy. Contact us here.