Internationalization and Localization Using Microsoft.NET (Paperback)

As a veteran of building software for multiple languages (with considerable experience with Visual Basic 6), Symmonds shares his insight about techniques that work best for internationalising software. Early sections establish guiding principles on how to use "resource bundles" for all graphics and strings in your software. In an interesting early section, the author glances at the very different meanings of certain colours in Western and Eastern cultures, showing the dangers of making easy assumptions about how the visual elements of your software will travel.

Subsequent chapters look at how these string and graphics resources worked in the old Visual Basic 6. Here the author shows off a way to extend the support for multiple resource files in VB6. (Normally, VB6 supports only a single bundle.)

The text then zeros in on the new support for multilingual software in Microsoft's .NET platform including default support for over a half-dozen calendars and tracking virtually all the world's languages (and dialects) with support for enumerating cultural regions. Most importantly, with .NET you can use XML-based resource files for storing culturally dependent strings and graphics separately. Of course, based on this infrastructure, it's still up to you to translate your software to multiple languages.

Techniques are illustrated here with two more substantial projects (in both VB.NET and C#). There's a useful custom resource editor and a hotel booking application (with support for both English and German users). Final sections round out the discussion with the author’s advice for localising software and some hints for translating program text effectively across cultures, including advice for project management.

The .NET platform works with some 20 computer languages and is sure to be used on even more human languages as software is written for today’s global markets. With good reference sections on the relevant .NET classes and APIs that will be needed to develop multilingual software, some effective sample code and an expert’s perspective on doing the job right, this appealingly concise volume will certainly fill a worthwhile niche. --Richard Dragan

Synopsis
Internationalization and Localization Using Microsoft .NET

• Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools
• Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Microsoft Windows > .Net
• Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering
• Books > Computing & Internet > Software & Graphics

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