Re: IRC client
On Sat, 05 Jan 2002 17:48:56 -0500, you wrote:
>, in theory, all one would have to do to release a French
>and a German version of a program would be to ship a different string
>resources file.
Obviously you intend something quite simple which would probably be
fine for smaller applications, so don't let me put you off, too much.
There follows a bit of a rant which should probably just have said "Be
aware this is fine for whole sentences, help text, etc, but single
word field and column labels will often still need editing by hand."
I once had the misfortune to "work" on such a system. Something quite
innocent - order springs to mind - can cause major headaches. The
English dictionary (the OED) may have about 20 definitions of the
word, but say in German the overlap is most definitely not 1:1. For
example German for sales order is I believe completely different to
purchase order, and for that matter a confirmed, held, delivered, or
invoiced order. The point is that where the English version has a
field or column heading of "Order", somehow you need to specify which
of the fifteen or so entries for "Order" in the German dictionary /
"string resources file" it corresponds to.
Another problem is that it is natural to design a GUI with appropriate
space for the English word which is often not enough for the other
language equivalent. Basically when using anything like "Name" you
have to pretend it is at least 10 characters long, sometimes more.
Things like "You have used" & percent & "% of your" & allocation & "MB
allocation" don't tend to work. "2" & "nd" & "January" also iffy.
Press .. Y - Yes || O - Oui || J - Ja, program has to know what
language it is working in and test input accordingly. Similarly Alf-F
opens the (F)ile menu in most programs but that's only in English.
They spent about 40 man-years upstairs trying to get this working on
the flagship product before dumping some b*****s on us about putting a
record number in the source code and hacking the display routine of
the operating system itself to fetching it from the dictionary before
display (so it *looked* normal in the editor), etc, etc - which we
then wasted about 4 man-years on before throwing away.
Sorry to be so negative, but forewarned is forearmed 'n all.
Pete
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