Internationalisation

[manuel companys]

Le Sunday, 5 Jan 2003, à 17:44 US/Central, José L. Rodríguez Illera a 
écrit :

> I use another approach for getting the same results. All interface 
> language
> translations are stored in a field,  each row a message or a label, 
> and each
> column a different language. This is easy to export or paste into a
> spreadsheet, easy then for translators and easy to put back into the 
> field.
>
> Language to be used for the interface (not for contents: this will 
> require a
> different approach) is in a global, say "lengua". The following 
> function
> retreives the correct translated string:

As for me I've being using in my HyperCard stacks three different ways 
of dealing with such a problem:

1.- What I used to call the 'matricial approach' * is basically the one 
José describes: either a) one line per language and one item per topic, 
or b)  the other way around. Some times I find it easier to take the a) 
way: the names of languages are listed in a button. Then you just have 
to say:
global qlang
{put line (word 2 of the selectedline of button 'Language' of field 
'buttonsLabels' into qlang} -- or fldLabels, or partLabels , for that 
matter
and then
{set label of btn bt to item bt of qlang} ** -- or fl or pt

2.- The card approach is perhaps more specifically hyperCardian: 
everithing common is in the background. When the interfacial difference 
deals only with language strings, a bg fld does perfectly the job and 
you can use all the fonts and styles you want, as you want; moreover, 
you can even switch to the shared mode for common storage. When there 
are behavioral differences from language to language cd btns permit 
separate handlers. Also a large part of the code can be repeated in 
each card with the dialog strings differences; this may be less elegant 
from the programmer's point-de-vue, but it is certainly faster for an 
old computer.

3.- The occasionnal do-as-you-can way is suitable when you need few 
matching equivalents in few and different circumstances, example
repeat with i = 1 to n
if string = word i of  "père pare padre pai vater father  otec" -- this 
string can also be a variable, of course
then return word 1 of "mère mare madre mãe mutter mother matj -- or any 
other variable
end repeat
Note that this ends up being a particular case of approach 1.

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

_________________

• I learnt from José that this is called an 'array'. José is been a 
great help for me a few months ago, when I was stumbling my first steps 
with R-R. He also deserved the single malt reward!

**this is much more conenient with R-R since you can still identify the 
object by the <name> while you localize the label, whereas HC had me to 
{set the name of object X to ...} and check {if the short name of....}