Internationalisation

[Sannyasin Sivakatirswami]

Yes, the custom property feature is very powerful... one way to manage 
this could be similar to what i use for a simple interactive teaching 
tool where there are several  levels analogous to languages in your 
context.

I use one stack where each lesson is one a single card, that card has 
several fields on it.

Here you can edit levels very easily (translations in your case) and 
maintain a kind of mini database and resource center. you can import 
and export delimited files from translators ifyou need that, or give 
them copies of the stack and later compile the data into one. When you 
need to update your "presentation stack" you use something like this: 
(in this case there are 20 "lessons" in two different categories )

on mouseup
   push card
   repeat with x = 1 to 10
     go to cd x
     put "Yama" & "|" & fld "ID" & "|" & fld "Sanskrit" & \
     "|" & fld "English" & "|" & fld "Level 1" & "|" & fld "Level 2" & \
     "|" & fld "Level 3" & "|" & fld "art imageName" & "|" & fld "art 
caption" & "|" &\
     fld "teacher notes" & cr after gYamasNiyamas
   end repeat
     repeat with x = 11 to 20
     go to cd x
      put  "Niyama" & "|" & fld "ID" & "|" & fld "Sanskrit" & \
     "|" & fld "English" & "|" & fld "Level 1" & "|" & fld "Level 2" & \
     "|" & fld "Level 3" & "|" & fld "art imageName" & "|" & fld "art 
caption" & "|" & \
     fld "teacher notes" & cr after gYamasNiyamas
   end repeat
   pop card
   put gYamasNiyamas into fld "gYamas"
## now set the custom property of your delivery stack which must be open
  set the cYamasNiyamas of stack "Yamas and Niyamas" to gYamasNiyamas

end mouseup

Then you have data in a custom property something like this

Yama|1|Ahimsa|Noninjury|Not harming others by thought, word or deed. 
|||1 Yama 1 Ahimsa.jpg||
Yama|2|Satya|Truthfulness|Refraining from lying and betraying promises. 
|||2 Yama 2 Satya.jpg||
Yama|3|Asteya|Nonstealing|Not stealing, coveting or entering into debt. 
|||3 Yama 3 Asteya.jpg||
Yama|4|Brahmacharya|Divine conduct|Controlling lust by remaining 
celibate when single, leading to faithfulness in marriage. |||4 Yama 4 
Bramacharya.jpg||
Yama|5|Kshama|Patience|Restraining intolerance with people and 
impatience with circumstances. |||5 Yama 5 Kshama.jpg||

etc. in your case your custom props would have different languages... 
for the same thing one line, or you could have different custom props 
for different languages... where line one of customPropSpanish is a 
match for line 1 of  customPropFrench...

and in your actual delivery/presentation stack you do stuff like:

on RunOneLesson
  put line gNowShowing of the cYamasNiyamas of this stack  into gNowText
## now you have one line of data from your custom property in a variable
   runOneShow
end Run\OneLesson

on runOneShow
   set the itemdel to "|"
   put empty into fld "level 1"
   hide fld "caption"
   hide fld "Level 1"
   set the icon of btn "displayArt" to none

##now you just parse out what  you want to use..
   put item 1 of gNowText & " #" & item 2 of gNowText \
   &cr&  item 3 of gNowText &" - " &  item 4 of gNowText into tTitle
   select text of fld "title"
   type tTitle
   put item 5 of gNowText into fld "Level 1"
   show fld "level 1" with visual effect iris open
   set the icon of button "displayArt" to item 8 of gNowText
   wait 2 seconds
   put item 9 of gNowText into fld "Caption"
   show fld "caption" with visual effect wipe down
end runOneShow

This can seem very esoteric at first (did for me) because what you used 
to think of fields on cards, becomes lines of data in a custom 
property, but believe me, in terms of maintenance and ease of delivery 
over using a multi-card system, its a whole quantum leap ahead in 
efficiency once you get your head around it. What become interesting is 
that you may find yourself just using 1-4 cards to do everything! And 
that becomes very efficient.

Sannyasin Sivakatirswami
Himalayan Academy Publications
at Kauai's Hindu Monastery
katir at hindu.org

www.HimalayanAcademy.com,
www.HinduismToday.com
www.Gurudeva.org
www.Hindu.org





On Sunday, January 5, 2003, at 06:33 PM, manuel companys wrote:

>
> I guess this method could certainly be very improved using the R-R 
> facilites, which I am just beginning to learn. The custom property 
> feature of R-R is also a huge extension of the contents-button system 
> of HyperCard, but I must confess I still am not clever enough to use 
> them  properly.
>
> Manuel
>