The .NET-Frameworks offers a good support for application which needs to be localizable.
For each of my C#-projects i create three ressources under the properties-folder.
-
Images.resx
contains images for the application
(mostly not needed to be localized, only for simple resource-access) -
Messages.resx
contains strings of messages for users
(such as contents of MessageBoxes) -
Resources.resx (normally created from VS by default)
contains GUI-relevant stuff
(such as label- and button-texts) |  |
For this example we use a simple message text in Messages.resx. The name of the localizable message text is MsgSampleText.
In the code this text can easily accessed:
1: string messageText = Messages.MsgSampleText;
2: MessageBox.Show(messageText);
To organanize resources for additional languages a new folder Additional Resources is used. In this Folder i create the resources files for other languages (in this sample we use en-GB- and de-DE-language support). In the filename i encode the purpose. So we have now
- Messages.de-DE.resx
- Messages.en-GB.resx
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Both of these resources should not be an embedded resource. So this must be changed to None
For each resource a so-called satellite assembly must be build. For that two steps we need:
- compile the resource with ResGen.exe
- link this resourse in the satellite assembly with AL.exe
For efficiency this is done by a post-build which calls a batch named CreateSatelliteAssemblies.bat under the folder Additional Resources.
1: ECHO PARAMETER1=%1
2: ECHO PARAMETER2=%2
3:
4: REM en-GB
5: CD %2
6: IF NOT EXIST en-GB mkdir en-GB
7: CD en-GB
8:
9: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\RESGEN.EXE" %1\Messages.en-GB.resx
10: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL.EXE" /t:lib /embed:%1\Messages.en-GB.resources,EsriDe.Samples.Localization.Properties.Messages.en-GB.resources /culture:en-GB /out:EsriDe.Samples.Localization.resources.dll
11:
12: REM de-DE
13: CD %2
14: IF NOT EXIST de-DE mkdir de-DE
15: CD de-DE
16:
17: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\RESGEN.EXE" %1\Messages.de-DE.resx
18: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL.EXE" /t:lib /embed:%1\Messages.de-DE.resources,EsriDe.Samples.Localization.Properties.Messages.de-DE.resources /culture:de-DE /out:EsriDe.Samples.Localization.resources.dll
And the post build for calling the batch and injecting the parameters %1 and %2 is:
1: "$(ProjectDir)Additional Resources\CreateSatelliteAssemblies.bat" "$(ProjectDir)Additional Resources" "$(TargetDir)"
After compiling the application there should the following folder-structure which contains the satellite assemblies
Henceforth the ressource-manager use the satellite assembly which fits to the language environment. And if no know language environement is used the default language included in the main assembly is used.