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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 Notice 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. If the
84 charset is "alien" on the platform the program is currently running (e.g.
85 any of ISO encodings under Windows or CP12XX under Unix) it uses
86 \helpref{wxEncodingConverter::GetPlatformEquivalents}{wxencodingconvertergetplatformequivalents}
87 to obtain an encoding that is more common on this platform and converts
88 the message catalog to this encoding. Note that it does {\bf not} check
89 for presence of fonts in the "platform" encoding! It only assumes that it is
90 always better to have strings in platform native encoding than in an encoding
91 that is rarely (if ever) used.
92
93 The behaviour described above is disabled by default.
94 You must set {\it bConvertEncoding} to TRUE in
95 \helpref{wxLocale constructor}{wxlocaledefctor} in order to enable
96 runtime encoding conversion.
97
98 \wxheading{Font mapping}
99
100 You can use \helpref{wxEncodingConverter}{wxencodingconverter} and
101 \helpref{wxFontMapper}{wxfontmapper} to display text:
102
103 \begin{verbatim}
104 if (!wxTheFontMapper->IsEncodingAvailable(enc, facename))
105 {
106 wxFontEncoding alternative;
107 if (wxTheFontMapper->GetAltForEncoding(enc, &alternative,
108 facename, FALSE))
109 {
110 wxEncodingConverted encconv;
111 if (!encconv.Init(enc, alternative))
112 ...failure...
113 else
114 text = encconv.Convert(text);
115 }
116 else
117 ...failure...
118 }
119 ...display text...
120 \end{verbatim}
121
122 \wxheading{Converting data}
123
124 You may want to store all program data (created documents etc.) in
125 the same encoding, let's say windows1250. Obviously, the best way would
126 be to use \helpref{wxEncodingConverter}{wxencodingconverter}.
127
128 \wxheading{Help files}
129
130 If you're using \helpref{wxHtmlHelpController}{wxhtmlhelpcontroller} there is
131 no problem at all. You must only make sure that all the HTML files contain
132 the META tag, e.g.
133
134 \begin{verbatim}
135 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso8859-2">
136 \end{verbatim}
137
138 and that the hhp project file contains one additional line in the {\tt OPTIONS}
139 section:
140
141 \begin{verbatim}
142 Charset=iso8859-2
143 \end{verbatim}
144
145 This additional entry tells the HTML help controller what encoding is used
146 in contents and index tables.
147