CKD-Zen-Cart Japanese Pack

[CrystalKoi]

@PingPing

Thank you so much for going through this. It really helps to have someone like you to point out all the little errors. I think I have addressed them all. Please see the updates.

Japanese Pack updates

Zen-Cart Japanese/English Pull Downs updates

Let me know if you find anymore things that don't work, or you don't understand, and again, thanks for the quality feedback.

Regards,
CKD

[PingPing]

Did your directions including new stuff and found no more tough complications. All seemed to work OK. So now it seems to work at first glance. Thanks so much for the effort and making this all available to Zen Cart users.

I'm gonna tell my Japanese friend to open a PayPal account and will try to have her use PayPal Express Checkout. Perhaps she'll want to use one of those other Japanese payment methods? You know how popular they are in Japan, I don't. Please feel free to educate wrt your experience.

Regarding shipping I don't know how best to handle that. Could you think about the japanese shipping modules and inform. If best to arrange shipping completely outside ZenCart please mention that too. In my demo store had USA address and was able to set up USPS and FEDEX modules. Seemed cool. But she has Japan address and doubt those would be good (perhaps FEDEX for international shipping option?). You know what's better in Japan. Feel free to educate.

Please accept my sincere appreciation for your work and responsiveness. I owe you coffee for sure. Next time in Japan will invite you to Starbucks for some of their crank. PingPing out.

[CrystalKoi]

@PingPing

Thanks alot for your input. It really helped me to see what the average user needs. Paypal is a great option, also, I use bank transfer and C.O.D. options too. All my payment methods have been custom made for customers needs. I will in the future try to add some shipping/payment modules for Japan. Don't have the time to do that right now, but if its something you need now, you can contact me and we could do it through my business.

I like to help, but it takes time, and that isn't much that I have right now outside of work. For shipping, look at your zones options and do more research on here. Just remember that with English and Japanese zones like you have, you will have to set each zone 2 times in the zones settings so it works in both languages.

Good luck,
CKD

[CrystalKoi]

Now if anyone out there would like to help with a Sagawa shipping module please contact me!

In going through the old Sagawa shipping module, I see it doesn't use the size or the product. Maybe it was a plan, but it was never used.

So I am thinking a new product property would have to be used for size and then maybe a % for items being added together and then use the zones. Man, I really don't like this company!

Anyways, if someone wants to collaborate on something like this, hit me up, I would love the help. Anyone..anyone...anyone...

[PingPing]

Heads up - I started adding 1st category name and found simple issue. When I went to save the Category name it appeared to be chopped off as if database table didn't have long enough field size. So I checked the table:categories_description using PhpMySql and sure enough it was set by default at varchar(32). I upped that value to varchar(64) and tried again. Success! So looks like the UTF-8 encoding may be issue for names that were previously no problem with latin encoding. I think (guessing) UTF-8 encoding takes like 3 latin (database) characters for each UTF-8 character. Not sure, guessing. It's something people should keep in mind if they find their names aren't being saved in database or not showing correctly. Just increase the field size in database table. FYI, using Google Translate to grab the Japanese (nice tool) kanji translation. The Google Translate page is UTF-8 encoded.

[CrystalKoi]

@PingPing,
Good tip on that! It is a common problem. I will do some testing with this when I get time and add some more tips to the tutorial.

Be careful with all the translation tools, as they tend to mess up, I have never seen a translation tool that is never out of beta for Japanese. I have a friend that made a good plugin for FireFox to look up Japanese text.

You can check that out here.
http://perapera.wordpress.com/

The google one looks better than the babelfish one, you will get some funny things with tools that try to translate everything, so just make sure someone can check it over.

PingPing, I must say thanks, and I am sure everyone will agree, that you have been the ultimate test user for the pack so far. Keep the input coming, and I will try to address everything in time.

Regards,
CKD

[PingPing]

I'm humbled by your kind words. The Rikaichan FF addon project was renamed, huh. Didn't know that. Thought the guy who makes Tomato firmware (mod to Buffalo wifi Router) was doing that, do you know him. Wow. You are super resource! I will have to email you one of these days to add you to my professional rescource directory.

For another dictionary translation tool, just recently grabbed portable (no install required) windows version of StarDict (http://www.winpenpack.com/main/download.php?view.708). It is handy for many languages. Just download the ones you need and add to the folder. It also has that "scan" mode. But I was copy the kanji from http://translate.google.com and paste into the search area of StarDict and see what that indicates. My nihongo is super-sukoshi, yukyuk. I looked at Rikaichan and was worried it might be hog on browser which is already hog.

You are the man for creating this language pack! I'm just beginning user, learning. The girl who will use my ZenCart store appears to have some new japanese language only store on some japanese language store portal. Don't know much about them. She is busy and maybe like most people not interested in the whole create & maintain a store. She's artist, not programmer. Seems like using Zen Cart with your japanese language modul (and future other language like chinese and korean) in UTF-8 is definitely the way to go! Much more control. Keep up the good work. ByeBye

[CrystalKoi]

So the pack has been out a while, and I would like to see feedback if there is any?

Also, what would you like to see next for a tutorial on how to do? This way I can know where to go next with the documentation.

Regards,
CKD

[_prd_]

Hi CKD...wow you could have saved me some time, if only my deadline wasn't already past! I had a client ask for a JA front-end EN back-end cart, and after researching chose to upgrade the old 1.3.0.2 version manually. Other than some time lost re-organizing the address input and display, it's worked out OK so far, but I'm sure I'm missing out on some functionality (prefecture dropdowns and UTF8 encoding for two) that your packs seem to offer.

You and / or folks who use your packs may want to be aware of a simple problem that can throw errors when PayPal express checkout is used. The details are posted here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96338

I look forward to implementing your work in future installs!

[CrystalKoi]

@_prd_
Sorry you didn't see this before hand. I will get it into the download section when I can. I just wanted some input before hand and as you can see, I have not recived much of that.

Regards,
CKD