Languages Builder

bigZidane, 12 May 2002

2.47 (13 votes)

2.47/5 - 13 votes

μ 2.47, σ_a 2.88 [?]

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The tool is used to replace resource (*.rc) with data from an Excel file.

Download Languages Builder source files - 288 Kb
Download Builder Config source files - 162 Kb
Download demo project - 117 Kb

Sample Image - LanguagesBuilder.jpg

Introduction

If you want to develop an application that uses many languages (English US, Kanji, French, Japanese... ), you will prepare many resource files, right? Maybe you can put them into DLL files or anything you like. And here is my solution. I put all STRINGs in a Microsoft Excel file, and I make this tool read STRING from Excel file and build into many resources or executable files. This tool supports Unicode, so you can use it to build applications for Kanji, Korea or Vietnamese languages.

Your task is just to prepare an Excel file.

Steps:

Run BuilderConfig to create initial Excel file.
Open Excel file and enter strings for another language.
Run LanguagesBuilder to generate multiple resources files or executable files.

Thanks all.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

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About the Author

bigZidane

	Web Developer
	Vietnam

// -------------------------------- //
// Personal Information //
// -------------------------------- //
Yahoo ID : dothanhtrongnghia
AOL : trongnghia95
ICQ : 151917542
Cell Phone : (84)-(90)-(3329867)

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Comments and Discussions

First Prev Next

Thank you very mach! This is very great tools!

libbyliugang3-Jun-08 5:19

libbyliugang

3-Jun-08 5:19

Thank you very mach! This is very great tools!
I just need this tool, because I need to exact all the UI resource for TransGroup to translate them to many languages.

Thanks very much!

Globalization using VisualBasic .NET and Oracle 10g

ashit_barot21-Mar-05 19:01

ashit_barot

21-Mar-05 19:01

Hi ,

I m using Visual Basic .NET and Oracle 10g for Globalization of our product. I am able to change the static text to particular language. Now my problem is i can't convert data which comes from Oracle database into particular language. Any tool/provider is required for that?

Can anybody guide me in that aspect???

ashit barot

Access Databases and Non-Western European Languages/Character Sets

John Clump13-May-02 18:49

John Clump

13-May-02 18:49

On a related topic, is it possible to store non-Western European languages (for example, Japanese or Russian) alongside Western European languages in Access databases?

I wanted to add multilanguage capability to a program I wrote, but instead of generating many resource files for each language, have a database with each language in it. For example, each row in the database would be a language, and each row would be a particular word a menu, or dialog, etc. When each dialog opens, the database would be opened and the captions in the menu, or buttons on the window, the title on the title bar, etc. would be pulled out of the database and changed dynamically. The problem is I don't know if you can have many languages/character sets in the same database. Unsure | :~

Re: Access Databases and Non-Western European Languages/Character Sets

bigZidane13-May-02 18:57

bigZidane

13-May-02 18:57

Hi,

Access or Excel is not our problem. Our solutiion is using Excel file to hold all resource strings. After that we use small tool to create Multiple languages application with Unicode supported.

Regards,
bigZidane

Excel File Format

Andrew Welch3-Apr-02 7:05

Andrew Welch

3-Apr-02 7:05

Can you please explain the format of the EXCEL spreadsheet?

How does the app substitute the translated text? Simple search and replace?

Looks like a great tool.

Thank you.
Andrew

Re: Excel File Format

Wolfram Steinke3-Apr-02 11:15

Wolfram Steinke

3-Apr-02 11:15

I think you need to put all the strings in there manually.

At my work we do a similar thing using Access database. All the strings are added to the database, one column per language. A series module is then run with a quiry. These modules then output the various rc, cxx, h and even rtf or html files for help topics.

Happy programming!!

Re: Excel File Format

bigZidane3-Apr-02 14:43

bigZidane

3-Apr-02 14:43

Yes, just SIMPLE SEARCH and REPLACE
That's all. I can not think a intellegent solutions for this. Smile | :)

)
Give me ideas if you found a better way or any comments.

Thanks.

Re: Excel File Format

QAnh6-May-02 9:02

QAnh

6-May-02 9:02

cha heu gi ca, SEARCH o dau, replace ra sao? khogn don gian vay dau ! Cool | :cool:

vote: -5 stars !

Please Teach me.

CLY2-Apr-02 21:07

CLY

2-Apr-02 21:07

Hi.Zidane.
Thanks for useful tool like this Smile | :)

I have one question.
How to show multi language with it's font?
Your Demo showed only English font.

We need the language's Font??
...and just write on ExcelSheet with the Font???

Thank you.

- CLY

Re: Please Teach me.

bigZidane2-Apr-02 21:26

bigZidane

2-Apr-02 21:26

In demo project, i included Excel file and u should take a look languages.ini file.
After you run this tool, you will have some executable files with another languages (for ex: French,....)

Note:
MY Yahoo ID: dothanhtrongnghia. come there to chat with you if you don't understand clearly.

Thanks your comments.

Suggestion !

CLY3-Apr-02 4:37

CLY

3-Apr-02 4:37

Thanks for your response.
I understood about my question.

BTW, it is troublesome to make a ExcelFile when my App becomes big software (ex. App which has many resources).
I think, it will be more useful that your tool have a function which makes a ExcelFile (from Rresource file of VC++Project) automatically, isn't it?

Thank you;)

- CLY

Re: Suggestion !

bigZidane3-Apr-02 4:43

bigZidane

3-Apr-02 4:43

uhm ....

A) I will tell you WHY I MADE THIS TOOL.

1. I have a PROJECT.
2. My custumer want this project is translated into MANY LANGUAGEs.
3. So they give me a EXCEL file.

-> I MADE THIS TOOL to DO THIS.
You understand ?

B) My tools will create MANY RESOURCEs for you.

C) Your ideas maybe right. But difference with my design.
My desgin : have only 1 resource file -> create MANY resourc files.
Your : have many resources file -> Excel file. Smile | :)

)

BTW: thanks your comments

Good idea but why using EXCEL !!!!

Jean-Michel LE FOL2-Apr-02 3:17

Jean-Michel LE FOL

2-Apr-02 3:17

XML would be a better solution, no ?

Re: Good idea but why using EXCEL !!!!

bigZidane2-Apr-02 16:04

bigZidane

2-Apr-02 16:04

Actually, I made this tool b'cuz my job. We already have data in Excel file. So i use Excel to store ALL STRINGs.

Thanks your comments.

Re: Good idea but why using EXCEL !!!!

Alexandru Savescu8-Apr-02 22:13

Alexandru Savescu

8-Apr-02 22:13

I agree that XML is a better idea. Anyway it's very fashionable nowadays to use XML, right

Best regards,
Alexandru Savescu

Re: Good idea but why using EXCEL !!!!

bigZidane9-Apr-02 6:48

bigZidane

9-Apr-02 6:48

Maybe XML is a good solution.

1- Actually, i don't have enought knowledge about this. And I think each language MUST have a XML file, right ? If RIGHT , i think it is not good for user, b'cuz they must know about FORMAT of XML file.
2- Excel file : everybody (maybe is CUSTOMER) can do this.

Thanks your comment.
I will improve it to capture XML features. Help me , okay ?

Re: Good idea but why using EXCEL !!!!

Emmanuel Deloget20-May-02 23:04

Emmanuel Deloget

20-May-02 23:04

> Maybe XML is a good solution.
>
> 1- Actually, i don't have enought knowledge about this. And I think each > language MUST have a XML file, right ? If RIGHT , i think it is not good > for user, b'cuz they must know about FORMAT of XML file.
> 2- Excel file : everybody (maybe is CUSTOMER) can do this.

> Thanks your comment.
> I will improve it to capture XML features. Help me , okay ?

With a simple excel file, you'll end up having two problems:

1) as everybody is allowed to change it, some customers will do Very Bad Things (tm) which will break your software. If you consider that it is up to the user to take care of this issue, you'll rapidly find that in fact, it is not Smile | :)

2) if you do not want to allow your customers to change the excel file, then you'll have to tackle with multiple translators and (of course) multiple version of the 'all in one' excel file. This is a pain and introduces time waster bugs (such as : in the last version of my excel file, i modified the 'taratata' translation to 'it smells like teen spirit' but it did not appear in the released version).

To minimize these problems, we created a tool to handle all the strings (some of them are marked as "not translatable") in a rc file. The string database is stored in a custom file (unicode). When we have new strings in the rc files we send them to our translators (more or less 20 people around the globe [russian, japanese, chinese, greek, english, and so on] and they sent back their modified database. Since we do not modify them, we do not have to tackle with the 'multiple version' problem, all the modifications are included and the end customer cannot change the compiled rc file (resource dlls "[PRG][HEXLANGID].dll"). And voila.

--
Emmanuel Deloget
Project Manager - imagus S.A.
France

Re: Good idea but why using EXCEL !!!!

bigZidane21-May-02 0:46

bigZidane

21-May-02 0:46

Hi,

Thanks your comment.

1) as everybody is allowed to change it, some customers will do Very Bad Things (tm) which will break your software. If you consider that it is up to the user to take care of this issue, you'll rapidly find that in fact, it is not

[bigZidane answer] We sell products to custumers so they can change anything they like.

2) We can not change resource if you don't have source code.

broken links

Anonymous1-Apr-02 20:19

Anonymous

1-Apr-02 20:19