Invisible content of Results window

[erex]

Alexandra in Greece (alexdemer2@gmail.com) sent this note to the Distance list on 21Aug19:

I'm also new to distance and I also get the same problem. I'm trying to run the Example 1 as suggested in the manual with no success whatsoever. I changed the language of my operating system (Windows10) from Greek to English (UK) and also unchecked the "Store results in compressed format in project databases". I tried several times to uninstall and install again the program with all the necessary startups but I still get the same error. I tried most of the already stored data to check if there is an issue with this set and also restored the sample projects (just in case) with no luck. Any other suggestions?

A follow-up Zoom screen-share consultation shows she has done all the obvious things (as mentioned in her email) to fix the missing results content problem. I am out of suggestions for her, and cannot resolve her problem. All other instances of invisible Results window content has been resolved by unticking the results compression, but not in her case.

[erex]

One day later, an email from Alex who borrowed a computer from a friend with this result:

I managed to get a different pc from a friend. Although windows were initially set up in Greek, before anything I changed the regional settings to English UK. Gradually installed R, Rstudio and Distance. Finally the analysis (sample line transect) run!
My guess is that in my pc there is a residual setting left somewhere that prohibits distance running smoothly and only a format can change that.

If I'm aloud a suggestion, you could add a notification in the site for users of non-latin language speaking countries to change regional settings before installation. This might help.

I think that advice is sound and should be included not only in the Users Guide, but on the webpage (because the users guide won't be viewed until after software is installed.

[lenthomas]

Hmm... Distance for Windows is designed to work with any regional setting. There are known problems with:

(a) MCDS analyses in regions where a comma is used to denote a decimal so if it's an MCDS run that might be it - although you should get an Error when the analysis is run; setting the regional setting to one where a decimal is a point fixes this;

(b) languages where characters are stored in double byte character systems (basically languages with lots of letters, such as Chinese), where results are not displayed unless the "store results in compressed format" option is un-ticked and analyses re-run.

I was not aware of any other issues with Greek systems, nor why one might need to change the regional settings before install to have things work. @erex, can you reproduce this issue by turning your computer to Greek regional settings, or @LHMarshall can you try? If we can't reproduce it then we should buy a Greek language version of the operating system that Alex is using and install it into a virtual machine for testing. (Note that in VM you can archive the state of the machine so multiple tests are possible without having to re-install.) Might be an issue with the installer, for example.