Multilingual apps (was: Re: Beginners global variable pb)

[Graham Samuel]

On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 13:25:25 +0100, Leraillez Benoit <Leraillez at netinfo.fr> 
wrote:

> > The basic idea here is that, instead of having a hidden card, you
> > have sets of custom properties for each card - one set for each
> > language - to hold the correct text for that card.
>
>   Ok but if I need to change texts because my translations are incorrect or
>if I add a new language, in a table I just add a column containing the texts
>and the whole stack is translated with a new language or I just import a tab
>separated new version and the errors are all corrected without having to go
>thru every card and finding the field properties by hand. Am I right?

Yes, I think you have a point there. I agree that if one is to have texts 
in other languages, chances are that there will be errors, and/or the whole 
set of texts will have to be created by a non-programmer. A real example I 
have is for an educational application written with English in mind having 
to be used in a Welsh-speaking environment. I'm not a Welsh-speaker, so I 
need to be able to give my list of original texts to an outside person as a 
text file, and get back a line-by-line translation in Welsh. I then need a 
rapid and tidy way of getting the Welsh text back into my application. IMHO 
I could only get all this data into Custom Property sets either by placing 
all the text strings by hand in many different objects and cards or by 
writing a kind of special interpreter that would take the text file and 
manipulate it appropriately according to the exact structure and use of all 
the custom props; either option seems a convoluted way to go about things - 
but YMMV. My own preferred option is to go for a simplified manual approach 
where every string that needs to be changed according to language is set in 
one particular handler ('setUpParameters'), and I simply read the Welsh (or 
whatever) text file into a text editor and paste each line directly into 
the Transcript code, all in one concentrated place in the app. This is 
crude but in fact works rather well.

Just my 2 eurocents

Graham


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Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France