OK, so we're writing our MFC application to make use of the built-in localization support with satellite DLL's since MFC 7. Everything seem to be working fine, except that my Windows 7 Enterprise Edition install with MUI support and using a Swedish UI instead of an English UI still displays the English UI in our application.
The application uses Swedish as its default language, with an English localization DLL in the form AppNameENU.dll, so MFC is actually intentionally switching to English language under these circumstances, as if it's not caring for the user choice in the MUI-enabled Windows OS, and only the default shipping language of the Windows install?
From the MSDN page on this (the link above), I read it as MFC should actually take these settings into account though, but I'm not 100% sure. Can someone please clarify?
It's because the MFC support for language selection has a design bug: It will decide to load resources from the exe only if no DLL match user OR system language.
In your case: It sets up its (ordered) list of languages as such:
Swedish (User language)
English (System language)
Then it looks up your DLLs (Bug: only the dlls, not the exe!): No match for Swedish. But there's a match for English!
Solution: Use my CLanguageSupport class. It works fine even in your use case.
Feel free to use it. You'll need only a couple of minutes to incorporate it into your app and it uses the exact same DLL scheme as the one you already implemented. (Hint: Don't forget the step where you must get rid of the CWinApp::InitInstance() call!)
In addition, if you are interested (this is optional), you can get an automatic languages menu to let user pick his own preference in case the default is not what he wants.
And if you're looking for a great tool to help you manage your translations, think appTranslator ;-)
HTH,
Related
I'm using Poedit/1.8.11 on Windows 10 to manage translations for a CakePHP project, namely English and Spanish.
For each catalog, I've chosen the translation language from the drop down list so I presume they are correct:
In source *.po they look like this:
"Language: en_GB\n"
"Language: es_AR\n"
Nonetheless, spell checker is checking both translations as Spanish. The program does not seem to recognise the language and I can't find any menu item to pick it manually:
Online help does not even mention spelling. How do you set the spell checking language in Poedit?
This isn’t a programming question, but a “how to use Windows 10” one. In Windows 8+, the spellchecker always uses the language of your keyboard (which is a different thing from its layout!).
See https://superuser.com/questions/480540/how-can-i-change-the-spell-check-and-auto-correction-language-of-ie10-windows8 for detailed instructions.
As Václav Slavík explains, Poedit does not implement its own spell checking solution. Instead, it relies on Windows builtin spell checker.
In any case, Windows spell engine appears to ignore both current input language at OS level:
... and current translation language set in gettext catalogue:
Instead, it appears to merge the dictionaries of all available languages and run a simultaneous check on all of them:
I understand it's a feature aimed at mobile users since it's similar to what Android virtual keyboard does but in this particular case it renders the entire tool useless.
Given that configuring languages is particularly difficult and counter-intuitive, I recommend to just ignore the feature.
I am writing software (Delphi 2009 Unicode project) which depends on third party library (.dll).
The library is working fine in English language but when I switch the language of application to Russian some characters are not shown correctly. (I can see ?????).
(Application uses several languages - most of them is working fine but especially Russian customers can see this bug).
I found out when I run the software with AppLocale (Russian language) everything works fine.
Also if in Windows Regional settings I set Language for non-Unicode applications to Russian I can see the characters correctly.
How can I achieve the same with code?
As I do not have sources for the library I cannot modify it. I suppose I need to initialize my software the same way as AppLocale do.
Something like calling SetThreadLocale() in application to affect whole application - and also the library.
There is no problem to write C/C++/C# library if this cannot be achieved directly in Delphi.
Some articles point to Windows 8 development being HTML-based instead of primarily using native code like C or C++ (as it has been until now) or .NET (as now, or even more so as it would have been in Longhorn, but never was.)
Is this true? Will the core APIs be accessible from Javascript then? What is the primary API / framework for Windows 8?
This is worth asking. When Windows 8 was demonstrated in June, a couple of comments by the presenter scared quite a few developers - or at least turned the Internet into panic mode. I'm surprised this question hasn't been asked here before.
The best article on the topic I have found is Windows 8 for Software Developers on Ars Technica.
The short answer is: it will remain the same.
The long answer is: it will remain the same, but several things will be added. You may want to pursue using those if you're willing to bet on new Microsoft technologies. One particularly interesting one is WinRT, which is a new object-oriented native code API exposed through COM, which is supposed to be a new version of the old flat Win32 API. Details are in the linked article.
It is very, very, very, very unlikely that anything that already exists, especially based on Win32 or .Net, would be removed. That means your existing programs written in .Net or native C++ or Delphi will continue to work fine. It is also unlikely that the primary development platform will be HTML. More likely is that HTML applications will be encourage for specific scenarios - perhaps touchscreen, kiosks and tablets.
I'd encourage you to read the article I linked to above - it covers this in far more detail than any answer here can.
There are three ways to develop for Windows 8, and they all access the same underlying API, the Windows Runtime.
Use C++ and call WinRT functions much like calling Win32 APIs back in the day (you know, yesterday)
Use C# or VB and call what appear to be .NET methods (but aren't)
Use Javascript and call WinRT functions
The UI is built with XAML using a pretty reasonable designer. More details are still coming out: check http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011 for videos with detailed coding demos. http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1005 is not a bad starting point.
There are 3 language/framework combinations that are all equally supported:
C++ and XAML
C#/VB and XAML
JavaScript and CSS/HTML
All are first class ways to write Windows 8 Metro style applications. Windows Runtime provides direct access to each of these languages and so choice of development environment can be based on familiarity or feature set of the language and not on restricted availability.
Update: I forgot one: C++/Direct3D (for games).
The original quote, in the context of writing a tablet desktop weather gadget application, is that the application uses "our new developer platform, which is, uhh, it's based on HTML5 and JavaScript."
The demonstrator never said a gadget is the preferred type for applications (How many Vista sidebar gadget or Windows 7 desktop gadget have you written in your life? Even when you can write them in simple HTML!), or the platform is the preferred platform for desktop weather gadget applications (How many animation control have you add to your application with video playing requirement? It is THE control used by Windows Explorer to display video!).
Today, after spending a few minutes playing with Windows 8 developer preview, I found that you can use Expression Blend 5 to easily auto-generate metro-styled applications in HTML and Javascript. Also in Visual Studio you can create exactly looking applications in Silverlight. :)
I am very excited!!! Go Windows 8! :)
When downloading both Firefox and Chrome, I've noticed that the default version I got was in my native tongue of Hebrew. I personally don't like my applications in Hebrew, since I'm used to the English UI conventions embedded in me since long ago by:
The lack of choice: Most programs don't offer interfaces in multiple languages and when they do, those languages are usually English and the developer's native tongue.
Programming languages which are almost completely bound to the English language.
My question then is this:
If you translate your applications, would you limit the UI to the user's native tongue or give them the choice by enabling more than one language pack by default?
Which language would your application default to (which is interesting mostly if you only install one language pack with your application)?
And also generally I'd like to know how much value do you put into translating your applications on a whole.
I've helped develop an application that was used by Dutch, English, Spanish and Portuguese speaking users. Because the application installed from CD we just added all the language packs. Mostly because it saved us a lot of work not having to maintain 4 different versions.
If your application distributed from a website and you have to support more than only 4 languages I can imagine you don't want to let everyone download every language pack. But only distributing the native languages of people downloading the application seems a bit restrictive. Most people I know actually like their software in english. So at least adding the english language to all the versions makes sense.
I've never written an application for use by a large number of people, and never for anyone that didn't use English as their language, but if I did, I would probably take a route that installs all available language packs at install (unless the user did a custom install, where I would allow them to choose language packs) and then switch between languages as an option inside the program. If I had to only choose one language, I would choose English if I was doing all of the work, or the native language of the users if I had a translator.
When writing an application for multilingual use, I use Microsoft's Best Practices for Developing World-Ready Applications, which includes retrieving the current CultureInfo from the OS and using that as the default language pack.
I usually try to ship products with all available sets of localized resources. Upon a user's first launch of the product, the UI is presented in the localization most closely matching the OS on their machine. Once within the app, the user has the option of switching the UI to one of the other available localizations.
I think it is very important to provide localizations that match one's target markets. Most "normal" people (not software developers!) prefer by far to have a UI in their native language.
my primary language is spanish, but I use all my software in english, including windows; however I'd like to use speech recognition in spanish.
Do you know if there's a way to use vista's speech recognition in other language than the primary os language?
Citation from Vista speech recognition blog:
In Windows Vista, Windows Speech
Recognition works in the current
language of the OS. That means that
in order to use another language for
speech recognition, you have to have
the appropriate language pack
installed. Language packs are
available as free downloads through
Windows Update for the Ultimate and
Enterprise versions of Vista. Once
you have the language installed,
you’ll need to change the display
language of the OS to the language you
want to use. Both of these are
options on the “Regional and Language
Options” control panel. You can look
in help for “Install a display
language” or “Change the display
language”.
To complete aku's answer, you have here different methods to have a "multilingual use in Vista".
Installing a language pack
Switching to a different language (and back)
Creating computer users. Create a user for each language and change the display language for that user to the language of your preference. A new Speech profile will be automatically created for that user. Switch between your languages by the normal procedure of “switching to another user” (Log offà Switch users).
Note: You can create a speech recognition profile for each user with any name you prefer. Change the name, or create a new user, in the Advanced Speech panel.
COMMENTS:
The advantage of the Separate Users method is that you can switch back and forth without changing any computer defaults.
The disadvantages are that it takes more disk space and more attention must be given to user management, and that you may not have access to files opened or saved by your other users unless you know how to give yourself such an access via the new permission dialogues of Windows Vista.
You should look at System.Speech.Recognition.SpeechRecognitionEngine - it's an 'in-proc' recognizer that will let you specify the language you want.
Your next problem is that en-US Vista doesn't ship with the spanish recognition engine. For that, you'll need the Spanish Language Pack. Once you install that, you should be able to instantiate a spanish recognition engine like this:
using System.Speech.Recognition;
SpeechRecognitionEngine recognizer = new SpeechRecognitionEngine(new CultureInfo("es-ES"));
At that point, you can install grammars & do recognitions, etc.
Sure, but I want to do it without
changing the display language... no
way then?
No, not officially, if you believe this KB article: The Windows Speech Recognition language must be the same as the operating system language in Windows Vista.
So try to change it automatically, there some scripts on the internet, I found them via yahoo with Windows Speech Recognition "change language".
This one looks interesting, but it is not tested. I don't know, if it's malware or whatever, so be carefull:
Vistalizator
Good luck!
You can install the language pack, but not apply it on your user. Then you might be able to change the language of the speech recognition, although I haven't tried it since I don't have Vista Ultimate.
It will work fine as I had by changing lanuguage support.