How to create an application using different national languages

Switching OS Windows into the respective language setting

If an application has to be operated in a foreign language, then the support for this language must be installed in OS Windows. It goes about the language fonts and also about setting the keyboard layout for the language.

The support of individual national languages is set for greater groups in OS Windows. For example:

It is possible to set the support even for more language groups concurrently. Though it is possible to display texts in various languages in the application concurrently (even from different code pages), based on the installed language groups.

We set the languages itself in Regional Options in Control panel of OS Windows. We set the support for the language groups, the default language, the language for time, currency, etc. format. Further it can be set the keyboard layout (even several layouts concurrently and the key sequence for switching between them).

Language of the development environment

The setting is in the "Development environment language" configurator in the menu " > PROMOTIC settings" in the main window of the development environment. This language has no impact on the language of the resultant application.

Language of the application

The setting is in the "PmaRoot > Application > Main language of runtime" configurator. This setting defines the language of system texts in application windows, components, viewers etc. It is possible to create an application that can be switched between more national languages when running.

This functionality can be achieved so that in all situations when the national text has to be entered (e.g. the "Value" configurator of the PmgString object), Macro expression $.text is written instead of the real text. If the macro expression cannot be used (e.g. text is created dynamically in the algorithm), then the Pm.EvalMacro method can be used.

Switching the application into another language is done by setting the properties Pm.RtLang and by calling the Pm.RestartGui method. The PmaWebLang object can be used for creating application, offering HTML pages as Web server and these pages wil be available in multiple language versions. For example the local PROMOTIC application will be running in English, but the Web pages will be offered independently in English/German/Russian ... language version. The example of switching the languages in the runtime mode and offering the Web pages in another languages can be found in the following example: Demo application of the PROMOTIC system.

Fully supported languages in the PROMOTIC system

A list of languages with full support and all system texts in the runtime mode of the PROMOTIC system.

These texts are contained in the text_sys.xml file that is located in the PROMOTIC installation folder.

The selection of these languages in running application is done by the "All used languages" configurator and the main language by the "PmaRoot > Application > Main language of runtime" configurator

In Macro expression $.text, there is a description and syntax of user texts in the application. The example of language switching can be found in Application divided into examples.

id	name	countries
cs	Czech	CZ=Czechia
de	German	DE=Germany, AT=Austria, CH=Switzerland ...
el	Greek	GR=Greece
en	English	US=USA, UK=Great Britain, IE=Ireland, CA=Canada ...
es	Spanish	ES=Spain
fa	Persian (Farsi)	IR=Iran
fr	French	FR=French, CH=Switzerland, CA=Canada ...
hr	Croatian	HR=Croatia
hu	Hungarian	HU=Hungary
lt	Lithuanian	LT=Lithuania
ms	Bahasa Malaysia	MY=Malaysia
pl	Polish	PL=Poland
ru	Russian	RU=Russia
sk	Slovak	SK=Slovakia
sr-latn	Serbian language written in Latin	RS=Serbia
tr	Turkish	TR=Turkey
uk	Ukrainian	UA=Ukraine
vi	vietnamese	VN=Vietnam
zh	Standard Mandarin	CN=China

Languages without system texts in runtime mode

For these languages, the system texts in the runtime mode will be displayed in development mode language or in English.

In the "All used languages" configurator, it is necessary to enter the identifier (id) of the corresponding language(s).

In the "PmaRoot > Application > Main language of runtime" configurator, also enter the default runtime language.

In Macro expression $.text, there is a description and syntax of user texts in the application. The example of language switching can be found in Application divided into examples.

id	name	countries
af	afrikaans	ZA=Republic of South Africa
ar	Arabic	SA=Saudi Arabia
bg	Bulgarian	BG=Bulgaria
bs	Bosnian	BA=Bosnia and Herzegovina
by	Belarusian	BY=Belarus
da	Danish	DK=Denmark
et	Estonian	EE=Estonia
fi	Finnish	FI=Finland
he	Hebrew	IL=Israel
hy	Armenian	AM=Armenia
id	Indonesian	ID=Indonesia
is	Icelandic	IS=Iceland
it	Italian	IT=Italy
ja	Japanese	JP=Japan
ka	Georgian	GE=Georgia
kk	Kazakh	KZ=Kazakhstan
ko	Korean	KR=South Korea
ky	Kyrgyz	KG=Kyrgyzia
lv	Latvian	LV=Latvia
mk	Macedonian	MK=Macedonia
mn	Mongolian	MN=Mongolia
mt	Maltese	MT=Malta
nl	Dutch	NL=Netherlands
no	Norwegian	NO=Norway
pt	Portuguese	PT=Portugal
ro	Romanian	RO=Romania
sl	Slovenian	SI=Slovenia
sq	Albanian	AL=Albania
sr-cyrl	Serbian language written in Cyrilic	RS=Serbia
sv	Swedish	SE=Sweden
tg	Tajik	TJ=Tajikistan
th	thai	TH=Thailand
tk	Turkmen	TM=Turkmenistan
ur	Urdu	PK=Pakistan
uz	Uzbek	UZ=Uzbekistan