Dennis :
>>
This may be a question for Mr. Gratias, or some of our other European
developers.
.....
I was asked recently to convert my app to Spanish. My first response was
fine, for the manual, and they are welcome to enter their data in Spanish.
But, to change and maintain all of the forms, reports, menus, etc., in two
languages, is a big job and I'm not sure it's a good idea.
Anyone else have a two language application?
<<
I'll do my best to help you in this way.
First, my ambition was less than yours : it was limited to have a french
looking app for end user, which is much more simple than having multi
language app.
With some swiss and german fellows, why fisrt try to translate errors and
warning messages that are stored in *.MSG files.
We decided to stop after some days (or weeks ?) because (as far as I
remember) :
- the program that convert sources MSG files into executable MSG files
don't support extended (accentuated) ASCII char.
- we discovered that some messages are hard coded into RBW code, such as
the windows asking "Press SAVE if you want to save your data, DISCARD ...
CANCEL" when exit a form, or "Do you want to Delete this row ?" when
pressing F9 in a form.
The idea of having one set of forms and reports for each language is
interesting. I did' try it, but it should work.
But think that maintenance will be very heavy : each time you'll have to
change a form or report, you'll have to make the same change (and test !)
in each set.
Don't forget also all the messages (PAUSE 2 USING ..., WRITE .... DIALOG
... CHOOSE ...) in the code itself are language dependant ...
To do that properly, all messages should be stored into tables and retrived
at execution time ....
This is a lot of job ... This supposed that the DB is always open ... and
is unique ....
Think also to keyboard problems :
- be sure that the numeric keyboard have a point on the DEL key (it is a
comma in Germany, so thay can't type decimal number on the numeric
keyboard),
- don't use PLAYBACK except for functions keys, because it assume that the
keyboard is US mapped (is I playback A, I'll get Q because key A on a
french keyboard substitute to Q on a US keyboard).
You could also have a different DB and a different code for each language.
More easy, but very expensive to maintain ...
May be Adrian Huessy from Swiss can tell you more about this topic...
Hold this help, and is not too depressing ...
J.M. GRATIAS, Logimatique, France
