How to localize Wix generated MSI installations?
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Has anyone figured out how to use Wix to generate proper localized MSI installs? It's not too hard for left-to-right languages, but for the various common right-to-left languages it seems impossible. Wix supposedly comes with Arabic and Hebrew localization files (for ver 2, but they are easily updated to ver 3.5 by adding three missing translations) but they just seem to plug Arabic or Hebrew text into the standard left-to-right dialogues, which looks weird and confusing. Imagine releasing an English product where the entire install UI dialogs were a complete mirror image, with English text plugged into them. Unthinkable, right? I've tried everything single thing I can think of, and have tested on various OS in various languages, but the UI remains stubbornly left-to-right. I know it's possible because there are Arabic MSI files out there from Microsoft that show a perfect right-to-left install UI (even on en-US operating systems). Wix can theoretically de-compile one of these back to source to show how it's done, but most of them are MASSIVE and would yield yards of code. (I've tried it, but it crashed out after about an hour.) It would be possible to "fake" right-to-left support by replacing EVERY dialog with a custom one (a huge boring job) where the Left attribute etc. was changed to reposition everything, but it would still be a kludge. Progress bar would still run the "wrong" way etc. I'm seriously thinking of changing to NSIS (which has AMAZING right-to-left support) but really that's only good for direct single-user installations. Too many network tools need an MSI to work properly. Any ideas?
JustAStupidGurl