Thanks for the help! Now the big question...Where do I get the special
Japanese version of PalmRez?
Shannon
At 9:47 AM -0800 3/16/99, Ken Krugler wrote:
>Shannon,
>
>>I need some help localizing applications to Japanese. The new docs describe
>>all the gory details of internal string representation, but I didn't see
>>any discussion of tools to use and how to actually build the thing.
>>
>>For the Palm guys: What are the tools you used and the process you went
>>through to create the localized applications in the Japanese WorkPad?
>
>1. Localization was done using ResEdit and either AppleGlot or PowerGlot.
>
>2. You need a special version of PalmRez to correctly handle calculation of
>text widths (primarily for menus).
>
>3. We didn't use Constructor, because it didn't work correctly with Japanese.
>
>4. The localized data can be stored in either resource (.rsrc) files or Rez
>(.r) files.
>
>5. 99% of the characters are the same between the PalmSJIS and MacSJIS
>character sets. The deltas, such as I remember them, are (a) PalmSJIS
>contains some special characters in the control range (0x14...0x19) (b)
>MacSJIS contains some special characters in the high ascii (0x80, 0xa0,
>0xfd...0xff) range, (c) PalmSJIS contains the extended Microsoft (from code
>page 932) double-byte characters, and (d) MacSJIS contains Apple's
>extensions to the JIS character set.
>
>Which means that if you use English System 8.5 and add in the Japanese
>Language Kit, then use the Language Kit Registration app to tag ResEdit as
>being 'Japanese', you can view & edit resources containing Japanese text.
>
>6. I believe that JOS used PalmLatin (pre 3.1) fonts for the low-ascii
>(0...127) characters, and standard JIS for the high ascii (single-byte
>katakana) and double-byte characters. Which means that if you're going from
>JOS to PalmSJIS, you shouldn't need to do any special translation.
>
>One side note, though, is that I believe JOS used narrower double-byte
>characters than PalmSJIS, thus any app built for JOS with a localized UI
>might need to be rebuilt using (an appropriate version of) PalmRez to get
>the menu widths set correctly.
>
>7. When dealing with localizers, I think the three most common approachs
>are (a) use a tool such as PowerGlot, (b) teach the localizers how to use
>ResEdit, (c) dump the data as Rez-format .r text files and hope that the
>localizers don't mess up the format, or (d) extract the text strings from
>the .r file yourself, and send them off to the localizer.
>
>If there isn't much text, then (d) is reasonable, otherwise I'd use
>PowerGlot and/or ResEdit.
>
>-- Ken
>
>Ken Krugler
>TransPac Software, Inc.
><http://www.transpac.com>
>+1 650-947-9222 (direct) +1 408-261-7550 (main)
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