Prepare an application for language switching
Before you can switch application languages, you need prepare the application for language switching.
To prepare an application for language switching
- In Windows, set up locale formatting and the fonts that the application is to support.
- Create, import, or open the application and specify a language in theLanguagebox on theNewtab. This language becomes the application's default language and can be used to show otherwise undefined text strings.
- Use theLanguage Configurationdialog box to add languages to the application. Any one of these languages can be designated as the default language.
- Specify the text strings for the application's graphic objects and messages.
- Create a language switch button for each language that the application will switch to, and assign a language to each button.TIP:The captions on language switch buttons change when the operator switches languages at runtime. To make the buttons identifiable besides the caption, you can color-code the buttons, or add flags to identify the language associated with each button.
- Use theLanguage Configurationdialog box to export the text strings from the application to a Unicode text file or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
- Translate the text strings in the exported file into each of the languages the application will use at runtime.
- Use theLanguage Configurationdialog box to import the edited file for each language into the application.
- Open the application and switch languages using theChange Application Languagedialog box to check the layout of the translated text.
- Create the runtime application, specifying the startup language and the languages that the operator can switch to.
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