One of my customers recently wrote to me about needing help with MAT poses in Poser 5. Well, we figured out that MAT poses for Poser 4 (even ones that are made manually) don't necessarily work in Poser 5. See: Poser 4 mat files don't always work in P5 thread.

Anyway, he sent an e-mail to Curious Labs' tech. support to see if they could help him.

From his e-mail:
** Operating System:
Windows XP Pro

• Operating System language (English, French, etc.):
  German
• Subject:
  Mat Poses & Poser 5
• Question:
  I figured out that some Mat-Poses work fine with Poser 4 dont work in Poser 5. The Problem is that you cannot Kill the TextureMap information with the mat-pose.
  Why?, What can I do, Are there rules for Mat-Poses in Poser 5*

From their response:
Poser 5 English version is not Supported on German Windows. English Windows must be used.

Is this true? Has anyone else received this kind of response from tech. support? Are the German and English versions of Windows so different that CL can't "support" people who are eager to purchase Poser before an "international" edition is released? (And will this edition be released before or after the Mac version?)

And I would have thought that CL would be a little more careful about how their responses to people, considering all that's been going on.

--John

It's called a 'schwing' -- a common tech support response that indicates 'this BS response is easier than solving the problem' The only actual language issue I can think of is that handwritten poses that reference English names for parts that are actually named through GetStringRes() will not work if the result of GetStringRes is different. That is, for instance, a pose that sets the head will not work when the head is actually named GetStrinRes(whatever) and returns 'kopf'. However, this should make no difference to materials on figures unless they have useCustomMaterial set to true and a custom material defined.

Only issue I've heard of is the European numeric format can cause hicoughs in Pose when it encounters a number not in 9,999,999.999 fomat. I've read here that some German users have had to set windows numeric format to amer standard to work.

That seems odd. Internally a number isn't represented as a string anyway, and the files should be using a . because that's the international standard whether it's fair or not. For instance, many programming languages come in different languages, but the numeric format is keep the same regardless of the headers' names for the keywords, and despite how you have the output appear.

I am using the german version of Windows XP Pro and Poser 5 runs fine. No idea what CL is talking about. I never have problems using the english instead of the german version of any program. I assume the problem with the Matposes is caused because P5 Matposes are different. Just open one of the Matfiles of Don or Judys texture maps and compare them to P4 Matposes - they contain all those node informations. I made a Matpose with a free Python script and it only contained the texture, trans - and bumpmap info but not the additonal node I added.

cl and techinal support? rofl! i've been using english p5 with german xp pro without extra problems with it. just the usual stuff that makes p5 worthless for me.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=841307

This is one of the threads I was thinking of - I've seen several that discuss Poser problems caused by users with Windows defaults caused by non-American Standard decimal notation. Aparently there's a variety of possible problems. Extracted from a thread in Poser Technical; As far as I know, one million dollars and 14 cents should be this in the USA: 1,000,000.14 In Germany (and most other European countries) the official notation is this: 1.000.000,14 Most Scandinavian countries and France have: 1 000 000,14 And the Swiss version (all German, French and Italian): 1'000'000,14 Tried doing searches on "international" and "german" there, and this is the first one I found. Someone else might try other keywords like "decimal" or whatever comes to mind. Good luck - past my bedtime;-))

Im using winxp german and poser 5 without probs

I use Win ME German and poser 5 without real problems. However, there is a issue with the decimal format. Some controls display numbers in German format (with decimal comma) but need input in US Fromat (with decimal point). stefan

I use a German WinXP-Home with P5 English version.

It uses English decimal notation (to which i'm accustomed anyway, working in IT).

I have P4-German. And I got P5-English (full version, no upgrade) because of the BS with the German library names.

No installer from DAZ3D (or any other merchant) makes references to German libraries. I always had the chore to move each and every file from "characters" (which was created by the installers) to "Figuren" - the same with the other libraries.

I didn't like it. So I switched over to the English version.

Never had any problems with P5 since day one shrugs, for what it's worth.

Willy

Asked Egisys and they said P5 supports the german Windows version as well.