Looking for help with Cyrillic fonts

Off-Topic
1

I recently bought a SlimDevices Squeezebox3 and am now going through the process of ripping my CD collection to FLAC lossless. I have a lot of Russian CDs and have pretty much always had a problem with the encoding. I've always felt too stupid to ask as, being a Russian translator, I really ought to know how to configure Windows properly but now it's time to ask!

I'm using XP Pro SP2, EAC V0.95 beta 3 for ripping and MP3tag 2.35 for tagging. My FLAC files are stored on a server running ClarkConnect 3.2 Home edition, on which runs the SlimServer software that runs the Squeezebox3. I've jumped through the hoops required to install the required perl module to the server (GD Library and CODE2000 unicode font) and all seems to be installed correctly. Prior to installing the GD Library, the Squeezebox was showing question marks; now it shows a blank screen.

And to Windows. I had a suspicion that the root of the problem was down to my lack of knowledge on how properly to configure Windows. I went into the Regional Settings > Advanced tab and changed the Language for non-Unicode programs from English to Russian. When it was set to English, the tags EAC grabbed from the freedb database looked like this:

They displayed in the same way on the Squeezebox3.

After changing the Language for non-Unicode programs to Russian, it displayed in Windows correctly:

It also displays correctly on the SlimServer GUI (using IE and/or Firefox as the browser), but the display on the Squeezebox3 is blank.

Also, changing the setting to Russian means that all the accented characters on my French CDs display as Cyrillic characters, so clearly I'm doing something wrong in Windows.

I can keep the Regional setting set to English and manually change the gobbledegook to proper Cyrillic. It then displays okay in Windows, but not in the SlimServer GUI or on the SB -- they retain the gobbledegook.

So, I humbly ask for some help as, from the browsing I've done on this forum, it seems that there are a lot of people who know of what they speak when it comes to character encoding.

Humbly,
Cams, Luxembourg

PS. I ought to have said: my Windows XP Pro is English.

2

This is really more a slim devices question.
Have you tried the latest beta version of their software 6.5b1 or similar?

On english windows:
What happens if you take a flac file, tag it with Mp3tag with Cyrillic characters but keep the filename only in english characters?
Slimbox on windows doesn't support filenames with characters outside of the current codepage.

The freedb/EAC issue:
You can fix these tags with Mp3tag with a Convert Codepage action.
When the tags look wrong in Mp3tag, just select the files, press shift+alt+6 and select Convert Codepage
Then search for an entry with (1251) and apply it.

3

Thanks for the reply, dano. The Convert Codepage worked from Windows in English mode, so that was neat. I didn't know that those settings were there; kind of like a secret shortcut as there's nothing in the Options menu.

It hasn't helped with the Squeezebox though. I thought that I had exhaused all SB options and had concluded that it was a Windows encoding problem. Hence my query here. Guess I've still got some figuring out to do then :frowning: