Multilingual dialogues

[Marielle Lange]

On Oct 20, 2005, at 12:33 PM, David Bovill wrote:
> Thanks - sounds good. And perhaps if all the language stacks were  
> substacks of stack "Translations" or.... then it would be easy to  
> add another translation and a script could automatically figure out  
> how many were available?

Here is the trick I use:

On any object that requires localisation, create a custom property  
called something like

loc("Title","items")

  --- Note, a third parameter may need to be added to handle  
switching between multiple localisation  (depends if you want to give  
the user the opportunity to switch between languages or rather  
provide him with one localisation only)

Title is the tag, items is the column to fetch in the localisation  
file (here the column with the list of items to fill for a pulldown  
button).
You have a file with localisation information (here in German). I  
**strongly** recommend the localisation to be kept outside of  
revolution (though this may cause problems when unicode is required).

------------------------------------------------------------
Title    Title    Mein Title    Herr;Frau;Dr.;Mag
FirstName    Vorname    Meine Vorname
SecondName    Nachname
ArtistName    Kuenstler Name
------------------------------------------------------------

The structure of this file is as follows:
TagName    TagLabel    TagDescription    TagItems

Then you have this handler at card or stack level, as appropriate:
------------------------------------------------------------
#####################################################
##
##  Get Localisation Information
##
##            This Information is found in the file: localization.xml
##            The structure of this file is: Tag (tab) Localiz Label  
(tab) Localiz Description (tab) Localiz Items

function getLocalValue pLocal
   --- Easy way to recover column number according to column name ----
   set the itemdel to ","
   put "name,label,desc,items" into tLocalCols        --- this  
greatly simplifies maintainability of the code.
                                                                         
                  --- Only one line to modify if you change the  
structure of your local file
                                                                         
                  --- Could be defined as a constant (very top of the  
script)
   repeat with x = 1 to the number of items in tLocalCols
     put x into AColNb[item x of tLocalCols]
   end repeat
    
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--------------------------------------
   split pLocal by ","      -- Tag, column name
   put getFileContent(pathLocaliz) into tLocal       -- This function  
is not provided here but it is obvious to understand what it does
                                                                         
                -- for me, I use constant pathLocaliz = "xml/ 
localization.xml" (replace by what is
                                                                         
                -- appropriate)
   put offset(cr & value(pLocal[1] ) & tab, tLocal) into tSTart; add  
1 to tStart
   if it > 0 then get offset(cr, tLocal, tStart+2)
   if tStart > 0 and it > 0 then
     put char tStart to (tStart+it) of tLocal into tLine
     set the itemdel to tab
     return item AColNb[value(pLocal[2] )] of tLine
   end if
   return Alocal
end getLocalValue
------------------------------------------------------------

Then you need to add some handlers at card level to automatically  
fill the content of any control which has a custom property cLoc that  
is not empty.

------------------------------------------------------------
on preopencard
   repeat with x = 1 to (the number of controls of this card)
     if the cLoc of control x of this card is empty then next repeat
     put (getLocalValue(char 5 to -2 of tItems)) into tLoc
     switch  (word 1 of the name of control x of this card)
     case "field"
     --- Fill the control as appropriate
     case "button"
     --- Fill the control as appropriate... pseudocode here
     if the style of control x is "menu" then
         --     replace ";" with cr in tLoc
         --     cLoc(tTag, "items") goes into the text
     else
         --     cLoc(tTag, "label") goes into the label
     end if
   end repeat
end preopencard

If you only have menu buttons, you can fill them automatically

Note that I am not processing unicode text here... The get local  
value and the preopencard handler should be modified to handle this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--------
Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
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