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Language Translation Guide

Selecting a Language During Installation

When you select a language during installation, the following actions are taken:

  • The appropriate DF_Collate.cfg file is placed in the \Bin folder. English and Dutch use the same collating sequence (English). French and Portuguese also share a collating sequence. All other languages have their own unique collating sequence. If you select a language with a non-English collating sequence, you will still have the opportunity to continue to use the English collating sequence for your indexes by disabling the 'Install localized collating sequence' option of the installer (although this is not recommended).

  • Translated versions of various error tables (e.g., FlexErrs.dat, DFErr001.dat, etc.) are placed in the \Usr folder. In cases where a translated version of a particular error table is not available, the English version is used.

  • All index files are created during installation based on the collating sequence of the selected language.

  • Language-specific package files are placed in the \Pkg folder (these are listed below). The xxx will be replaced with the appropriate language name. The English versions of the first six files do not use the _English notation for backward compatibility.

  • DefaultToolbar_xxx.pkg
  • Dfstdbtn_xxx.pkg
  • File_pm_xxx.inc
  • Help_pm_xxx.inc
  • HelpA_pm_xxx.pkg
  • Language_xxx.inc
  • Language_DD_xxx.inc
  • Language_WebApp_xxx.inc
  • Language_WinPrint_xxx.inc
  • Navi_pm_xxx.inc
  • Win_pm_xxx.inc

  • WinPrintViewer_xxx.ini (place in \Bin)

  • All English packages and include files are always installed into the \Pkg folder.

  • The Language_Current.pkg file controls which “set” of language packages are used. Language_Current.pkg will be set to the language you selected automatically.

  • A full set of the above-referenced collate, error, and package files for each language is located in the \Usr\Language folder. There is a sub-folder for each supported language. If you use these files to change languages manually after the installation, you must re-sort all index files before accessing any data using the new language.

As long as you are simply selecting a supported language via the DataFlex installation, you really do not need to review the rest of the information in this section.

Understanding Language Translation

The purpose of language translation is to make it possible to compile and run an end-user application in the language of choice.

As you will see, selecting your application deployment language requires a number of steps, including running the application on a computer that is running the appropriate regional version of Windows. For this reason, we expect the selection of a language to be a fairly static process. Once you have configured your computer and DataFlex for a particular language, we do not expect you to change it. Anytime you do change it, you will need to follow the steps listed here.

Please note that these changes affect the applications you write. They do not affect the DataFlex tools and the documentation you use to build your applications. Those tools remain in English.

This topic is divided into two sections:

  • Selecting Your Language from a list of already selected languages. This assumes that all of the language translations have already been made and you just need to use those translations. This section will also deal with some of the translation issues that you may face with your own application.

  • Creating or Updating a Language deals with the steps required to add a new language to DataFlex. This involves creating and translating a number of files. If the language you need is not supported, you will need to start here. We list this second in the hope that most of you will find your language of choice and be able to skip this entire section.

See Also