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1 \section{Writing non-English applications}\label{nonenglishoverview}
2
3 This article describes how to write applications that communicate with
4 user in language other than English. Unfortunately many languages use
5 different charsets under Unix and Windows (and other platforms, to make
6 situation even more complicated). These charsets usually differ in so
7 many characters it is impossible to use same texts under all platforms.
8
9 wxWindows library provides mechanism that helps you avoid distributing many
10 identical, only differently encoded, packages with your application
11 (e.g. help files and menu items in iso8859-13 and windows-1257). Thanks
12 to this mechanism you can, for example, distribute only iso8859-13 data
13 and it will be handled transparently under all systems.
14
15 Please read \helpref{Internationalization}{internationalization} which
16 describes the locales concept.
17
18 In the following text, wherever {\it iso8859-2} and {\it windows-1250} are
19 used, any encodings are meant and any encodings may be substituted there.
20
21 \wxheading{Locales}
22
23 The best way to ensure correctly displayed texts in a GUI across platforms
24 is to use locales. Write your in-code messages in English or without
25 diacritics and put real messages into the message catalog (see
26 \helpref{Internationalization}{internationalization}).
27
28 A standard .po file begins with a header like this:
29
30 \begin{verbatim}
31 # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
32 # Copyright (C) YEAR Free Software Foundation, Inc.
33 # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
34 #
35 msgid ""
36 msgstr ""
37 "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
38 "POT-Creation-Date: 1999-02-19 16:03+0100\n"
39 "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
40 "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
41 "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\n"
42 "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
43 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=CHARSET\n"
44 "Content-Transfer-Encoding: ENCODING\n"
45 \end{verbatim}
46
47 Note this particular line:
48
49 \begin{verbatim}
50 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=CHARSET\n"
51 \end{verbatim}
52
53 It specifies the charset used by the catalog. All strings in the catalog
54 are encoded using this charset.
55
56 You have to fill in proper charset information. Your .po file may look like this
57 after doing so:
58
59 \begin{verbatim}
60 # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
61 # Copyright (C) YEAR Free Software Foundation, Inc.
62 # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
63 #
64 msgid ""
65 msgstr ""
66 "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n"
67 "POT-Creation-Date: 1999-02-19 16:03+0100\n"
68 "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n"
69 "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\n"
70 "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\n"
71 "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
72 "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso8859-2\n"
73 "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"
74 \end{verbatim}
75
76 (Make sure that the header is {\bf not} marked as {\it fuzzy}.)
77
78 wxWindows is able to use this catalog under any supported platform
79 (although iso8859-2 is a Unix encoding and is normally not understood by
80 Windows).
81
82 How is this done? When you tell the wxLocale class to load a message catalog that
83 contains correct header, it checks the charset. The catalog is then converted
84 to the charset used (see
85 \helpref{wxLocale::GetSystemEncoding}{wxlocalegetsystemencoding} and
86 \helpref{wxLocale::GetSystemEncodingName}{wxlocalegetsystemencodingname}) by
87 user's operating system. This is default behaviour of the
88 \helpref{wxLocale}{wxlocale} class; you can disable it by {\bf not} passing
89 {\tt wxLOCALE\_CONV\_ENCODING} to \helpref{wxLocale::Init}{wxlocaleinit}.
90
91 \wxheading{Font mapping}
92
93 You can use \helpref{wxEncodingConverter}{wxencodingconverter} and
94 \helpref{wxFontMapper}{wxfontmapper} to display text:
95
96 \begin{verbatim}
97 if (!wxFontMapper::Get()->IsEncodingAvailable(enc, facename))
98 {
99 wxFontEncoding alternative;
100 if (wxTheFontMapper->GetAltForEncoding(enc, &alternative,
101 facename, FALSE))
102 {
103 wxEncodingConverted encconv;
104 if (!encconv.Init(enc, alternative))
105 ...failure...
106 else
107 text = encconv.Convert(text);
108 }
109 else
110 ...failure...
111 }
112 ...display text...
113 \end{verbatim}
114
115 \wxheading{Converting data}
116
117 You may want to store all program data (created documents etc.) in
118 the same encoding, let's say windows1250. Obviously, the best way would
119 be to use \helpref{wxEncodingConverter}{wxencodingconverter}.
120
121 \wxheading{Help files}
122
123 If you're using \helpref{wxHtmlHelpController}{wxhtmlhelpcontroller} there is
124 no problem at all. You must only make sure that all the HTML files contain
125 the META tag, e.g.
126
127 \begin{verbatim}
128 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso8859-2">
129 \end{verbatim}
130
131 and that the hhp project file contains one additional line in the {\tt OPTIONS}
132 section:
133
134 \begin{verbatim}
135 Charset=iso8859-2
136 \end{verbatim}
137
138 This additional entry tells the HTML help controller what encoding is used
139 in contents and index tables.
140