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Q130057: Supporting Multiple Languages in a Single Application

Article: Q130057
Product(s): Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit
Version(s): WINDOWS:3.1
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): 
Last Modified: 06-NOV-1999

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.1 
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SUMMARY
=======

It is not trivial to support multiple languages in a single Windows-based
application. Unlike Windows NT, Windows has no built-in support for different
language versions of a single resource.

MORE INFORMATION
================

The easiest way to do it and the way it is done for Windows itself and all our
localized Windows-based applications, is to have separate executables for each
language (English, German, French, and so on) version.

However, it is possible to create a single executable that supports multiple
language resources. For example, you could have a separate DLL containing the
resources for different language versions of your application. You can link a
specific version of DLL in runtime.

The language selection should be an install-time option, because there is no
official way to identify the host language. The application needs to ask the
user to confirm what the application has found.

All the messages and system errors generated by Windows, regardless of your
resource files, will displayed as the local language error messages.

If an application needs to have one resource file, the developer must create a
unique resource ID for each language version of the resource, and then load the
appropriate resource depending on the language. For example, the following
string table could be created:

     IDS_HELLO_ENGLISH, "Hello"
     IDS_HELLO_GERMAN, "Hallo"

The application would then either load the English string or the German string as
required.

There is no documentation on this subject because it is not a feature of Windows.
There is a new book out that has a chapter on internationalizing applications.
It is written in a friendly manner. Microsoft Windows 3.1 Developer's Workshop
by Dr. John Butler; it's published by Microsoft Press. In addition, the
Microsoft Developer Relations Group is currently revising "The International
Handbook."

Additional query words: 3.10 localization international foreign kbinf

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Keywords          :  
Technology        : kbAudDeveloper kbWin3xSearch kbSDKSearch kbWinSDKSearch kbWinSDK310
Version           : WINDOWS:3.1

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