http://jimmyz.3322.org/wm5cn.html

just wrote myself, hope it helps.

simple tutorial to add Chinese support on English Windows Mobile 5.0™ devices
of course you can use "CE-Star" or "Monster Chinese" to solve the prob, but i'm talking about a way free of charge, may extend to other usages like add Japanese support to a French device, tested on my Dell Axim X51v. read below, if you do NOT wanna read my nonsense yak, go straight to part 3.

1st, the font.
the font in a WM5EN may not have Chinese font support, you must find a font that support Chinese characters like "simsun"/"simhei"/"youyuan", i prefer the font from "Windows Vista™" called "Microsoft YaHei", due to copyright prob, i can't provide the file here, go get it from Vista yourself then put the .ttf file in the \windows folder(not the \windows\fonts\ folder, i tried that folder but failed, damn strange, m$ store their fonts in \windows so why the fonts folder exist?) on your device.

then we need some registry edit, the default system font is "Tahoma" and hard coded in the resource so can't be altered, we must extend the "Tahoma" to support Chinese characters, i found an article on MSDN here, well this article is not that accurate, there is no need to extend fonts other than "Tahoma", and the "FontLinkMethods" seems no need to be set(at least i didn't set it on my x51v and the font link works, condition always varies, so you may check this if it doesn't work with out this value). so we need only two keys:
you may change the value according to you font file name and font name. i recommend resco explorer with registry plugin to modify the registry, after a reset(i recommend the soft reset command in the menu of magic button other than the reset hole on the back, some say the reset hole will not flush the registry, well i'm not sure but in my practice magic button always flushes), you may see most programs works with Chinese well now, such as Chinese named files/folder in resco explorer.

2nd, the locale.
well, still some stupid non-pure-unicode programs works not well with Chinese, such as Total Commander, you need the Chinese code page, while in Windows XP, you can manually select code pages available on your system via control panel -> regional and language options -> advanced, but you can't do that in WM5, the code pages are hard coded in the rom, be precisely, the file "wince.nls" under \windows, this file decide how many code pages will be available on your device, as you know, to reserve spaces, English version of WM5 do not contain the Chinese code page. so we need a "wince.nls" file with Chinese code page support, and again due to f*cking copyright, i can't provide the file here, i got one from my friend's X51v Chinese version, or you can get one from the WM5 Chinese image freely available on microsoft.com, or build one by yourself using platform builder and CAUTION the wince.nls file from WM4 was not compatible even they share the same name.

and to replace the "wince.nls" file, i recommend resco explorer again, the default file explorer will refuse to replace the file. but if resco can't replaces the file, that was because a security setting, this security setting was set by manufacturers so can't be altered by end users as far as i know.

if you soft reset now, you may find the locale didn't change, still no Chinese code page selectable in regional and language options, that is because actually you didn't "replace" the wince.nls file, the original file is still in the ROM, your replaced one is in the so-called "persistent storage" while the system already loaded the one in the ROM, WM4 will load the new file while WM5 didn't, we must make the system reload the wince.nls file, i found a free tool named "reloadnls" written by ホーミン, you can download it from his/her weblog. it was a simple exe file, put it anywhere(i recommend \windows), and run it, nothing happened? no! go to your regional and language options again, you may see the Chinese code page is now selectable! make a shortcut to it under \windows\startup so the nls file is reloaded every time system starts.


3rd, have fun and the abstract.
copy the font/wince.nls/reloadnls.exe to /windows, when asked "overwrite?" answer yes, modify the font link registry, make a shortcut under \windows\startup to reloadnls.exe, run it once, set regional and language options to Chinese, restart.

you know this is really cool. but i got a headache reading your instructions
is there a simple way to do this for dumb ppl like me?

spb pocketplus + spb weather + spb diary = a x50v that rocks

 

follow the 3rd part i think...

This is a very useful posting.

I am trying to add zh-CN locale on my English version wince device. I tried to find a wince.nls file for such a support, but I could not find it online. Would you mind to send me a copy of the wince.nls you grabbed from your friend's device?

Thanks!