I'm building a User Control using C#/Winforms and have struck a bit of an issue with localization.
I have added a number of strings to the resource file "inside" the user control, using the UserControl.resx file created automatically by Visual Studio. For the immediate term, these strings provide the Text values for the various buttons in the user control. I have tested this with location specific suffixes (ie, UserControl.zh-HK.resx), and all appears to work perfectly.
What I have found, though, is that the UserControl.resx file I am using gets wiped out, or cleared, at irregular intervals (I haven't nailed down exactly when it does and does not get cleared).
A big clue is that the IDE throws a message box when I attempt to edit this file. It says, in essence, that my changes may be lost. Experience has taught me that this is certainly the case.
For various reasons, the idea of having the resource file tightly coupled to the user control seems attractive. There are several of us, all developing user controls that are destined for the same product.
Is there any way to stop VS from smashing my string resources? Is there a better way, allowing for the fact that we want a separate set of resource files for each user control?
Thanks.
Long story short, everything I was doing was wrong.
In the end, what I have done is create a Resources folder in my project, with a separate set of resource files for each discrete component (form, user control, etc). Then in each component I retrieve the strings like buttonFoo.Text = Resources.UserControl.buttonFoo_Text.
This method seems to be working well enough for now and provides the separation of resource files that I wanted, while making the integration of the code from multiple sources semi-painless.
Related
I have a strange problem with Visual Studio. I have a large application in C# with lots of forms and also a .resx file that contains strings. I have various language versions of the .resx file, e.g.
MyApplication.resx,
MyApplication.ja.resx
Now take this piece of code, which refers to a windows control (a label) is contained within the control definition part of the code:
this.uxMyLabel.BackColor = System.Drawing.SystemColors.Window;
resources.ApplyResources(this.uxMyLabel, "uxMyLabel");
this.uxMyLabel.Name = "uxMyLabel";
this.uxMyLabel.ReadOnly = true;
this.uxMyLabel.Text = global::MyNamespace.MyApplication.MY_TEXT_STRING;
Every now and again I will build my application only to find that that last line has changed to
this.uxMyLabel.Text = global::MyNamespace.MyApplication_ja.MY_TEXT_STRING;
Since there is no file called MyApplication_ja.resx then of course the build fails and I have to edit and change it back to MyApplication
I am not sure when this change happens (while I'm editing the code? While I'm building it?) but it only happens occasionally and to lots of different controls, often a whole file at a time. (though never to the entire project)
I am editing the file in question elsewhere, though not anything to do with that particular control.
Why does this happen?
I'm not fully aware about the configurations at your end, therefor I'm feeling a little constraint in analyzing why VS is having an affinity for Japanese("ja") localisation assembly.
But I do see an issue with the way your Form/UserControl is localized, so I'll point it out. And I think sticking to the correct pattern may help getting rid of the mentioned behavior.
The controls should not pick values from global resource like this.uxMyLabel.Text = global::MyNamespace.MyApplication.MY_TEXT_STRING;
instead Localizable property of the Form/UserControl must be set to true.
This will create a .resx file exclusively for the Form/Usercontrol and will take out all culture specific properties (of all controls) from the designer to the resx .
This will enable the developer (or designer) to set localised texts for different languages at design time. here is a link - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y99d1cd3(v=vs.100).aspx#
Understanding that you are working on massive application with many forms, my suggestion may be a bit too time consuming nbecause it will involve localizing each control again for all language.
But incase the problem you mentioned become a pain, perhaps you can give it a try on the most notorious forms(user controls) first.
Hope it helps.
I'm currently working on a project to provide interop between two unrelated pieces of software. I need to pass the data from a textBox/textBoxes, into a textBox of the other said app.
My current idea is to find the handle of the target control, make it active, and enter the data by copying it to the clipboard, and pasting it via:
Clipboard.SetText(textBox1.Text, TextDataFormat.Text);
SendKeys.SendWait("^V");
As textBoxes have no 'caption', handles are dynamically assigned on the process start, and class names are appended with various data regarding the process, is it possible to get a handle for an object within a window via some sort of indexing? I'd be more than willing to find the correct handle by trial and error if need be, as long as it would be consistent for every instance of the application.
Thanks in advance
A.
If you don't have any other choice.. to make this easier, you can use AutoIT.. I had to do something like this a very long time ago. AutoIT. They have a DLL for .net Applications, so you can use their functionality without having to use their scripts. If you do use their scripts.. they also have an option that will turn their script into an executable.
Recently I was working on displaying workflow diagram images in our web application. I managed to use the rehosted WF designer and create images on-the-fly on the server, but imagining how large the workflow diagrams can very quickly become, I wanted to give a better user experience by using some ajax control for displaying images that would support zoom & pan functionality.
I happened to come across the website of seadragon, which seems to be just an amazing piece of work that I could use. There is just one disadvantage - in order to use their library for generating deep zoom versions of images I have to use the file structure on a server. Because of the temporary nature of the images I am using (workflow diagrams with progress indicators), it is important to not only be able to create such images but also to get rid of them after some time.
Now the question is how can I best ensure that the temporary image files and the folder hierarchy can be created on a server (ASP.NET web app), and later cleaned up. I was thinking of using the cache functionality and by the expiration of the cache item delete the corresponding image folder hierarchy, or simply in the Application_Start and Application_End of Global.asax delete the content of the whole temporary folder, but I'm not really sure whether this is a good idea and whether there are some security restrictions or file-system-related troubles. What do you think ?
We do something similar for creating PDF reports and found the easiest way is to use a timestamp check to determine how "old" files are, and then delete them based on a period of time, in our case more then 2 hours old. This is done before the next PDF document is created, but as part of the creation process. We also created a specific folder and gave the ASP.Net user read/write access to the folder.
The only disadvantage is that if the process of creating PDF's is not used regularly there will be a build up of files, however they will be cleaned up eventually. In 2 years and close on 4000 PDF's we have yet to have an error doing it this way.
Use the App_Data folder. This folder is inside your application and writable by your app without having to go outside the context of the app, but it's also secured from casual browsing. It's meant to hold data files for your application.
Application_Start and Application_End will only fire once each, so if you need better cleanup than that, I would consider using a cache structure or a simple windows service to handle the cleanup.
First, you have to make sure your IIS worker process has rights to write/delete files from your cache directory (and NOT the rest of your site, just in case)
2nd, I would stay away from using App_Start and App_End, App end to clean up files is not 100% guaranteed to fire, and you could end up with a growing pile of orphaned images.
I would instead make a scheduled process, maybe runs once per hour, or once a day, depending on what you want. And have it check how old each image in your cache is, and if its older than your arbitrary "expiure time" then delete it.
Other than that there's not much to it.
I have a WinForms application which I want to translate into multiple languages. However, I do not have any experience with localizing a WinForms app, and I find very contradictory information about this subject.
Basically, what I want is:
In the source code, I want only one file per language
This file gets compiled into the main application on compilation - no satellite assemblies or external data files after building the application
The user can select the language, I do not need/want auto-detection based on the operating system
This should mainly contain strings and ints, but also a CultureInfo
Most solutions I've seen either have one .resx file per Form and/or external satellite assemblies.
Do I have to roll my own?
Or is there something in the framework already?
.net Framework 3.5 SP1 if that matters.
Edit:
For the most part, Visual Studio already offers support for what I want, but there are two issues. When I set Form.Localizable to true I have this nice Designer support, but this generates one resx per Form. The idea of manually overriding it in InitializeComponent fails because it's designer-written code that will regularly be overwritten.
Theoretically, I only want to :
a) override the creation of the ComponentResourceManager to point it to my global resx and
b) change the call to ApplyResources to the overload that takes a CultureInfo as third parameter.
It seems as if I have to add a function call to my constructor that gets called after InitializeComponent() and overrides its behaviour. That seems terribly inefficient, but Visual Studio is right when it warns about touching InitializeComponent().
At the moment, I am indeed rolling my own WinForms localization Framework...
I've just completed a C# .Net 3.5 project with a similar problem. We were writing WinForms plugin for an existing multi-lingual application with 8 languages (including English).
This is how we did it:
Create all our forms and UI in the default language, English.
Put all our internal strings in a resource file (stuff not tied directly to a form like custom error messages and dialog box titles etc)
Once we had completed most of the work and testing we localised it.
Each form already had a .resx file but this was empty. We set the property 'Localizable' to true, the .resx file was filled with things like button sizes & strings.
For each of the other languages, we changed the 'Language' property on the form. We chose the basic version of each language eg: 'Spanish' instead of 'Spanish (Chile)' etc. so that it would work for every 'Spanish' dialect, I think.
Then we went through each control, translated its text and resized, if needed. This created a .resx per language and form combination.
We were then left with, for 8 languages, 8 .resx for each form and 8 .resx for the general strings. When compiled the output folder had the .dll we were creating and then a sub folder for each language with a .resources.dll in it.
We were able to test the versions of the UI in the designer by just changing the language property to check that we had the correct strings & layout.
All in all once we got our heads around it, it was quite easy and painless.
We didn't need to write any custom tweaks to the form loading
I was asking a similar question about ASP.NET and got a first answer - this tool and its workflow might also be something for you - have a look: Lingobit Localizer
It seems to be able to load your Winforms app and allows you to start translating your labels etc. and see the forms while you do it. Lots of other features, too, like incremental translation and translation memory (if you use the same terms over and over again).
Looks quite promising (for Winforms) - haven't used it myself, though.
Here's an extensive list of potential .NET localization tools - not sure, how well they work and what they cover - have a look, maybe you'll find what you're looking for.
Marc
I dont have a solution for your first and second requirement but keep in mind that localizing a form is not as simple as translating each word. You need to check that each translated text fits in their respective control. Also, maybe you have an icon or an image which need to be change in another culture.
For your point three, you can change the language manually with the following lines:
CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("fr");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = ci;
This is a huge subject and there are many ways to accomplish what you want. The framework does provide the basis but a complete solution requires that you implement certain elements yourself.
For example the default framework implementation is to create a .resx file for every resource. In ASP.Net this means each user/server control or page. This doesn't lend itself to easy maintenance and if you want to move resources to a database you need to implement your own provider.
My familiarity with Winforms is limited but if you are using Silverlight or WPF then have a read of Guy Smith-Ferrier's work on the subject at: http://www.guysmithferrier.com/category/Internationalization.aspx. He also has some toolsets that can make your life easier at: http://www.dotneti18n.com/Downloads.aspx.
I've worked with him before and have never come across anyone else with a better depth of understanding of the subject.
What you are asking for:
no satellite resource files
only one size and control placement per form.
lots of languages embedded in the executable.
Is not do-able in vanilla Visual Studio's IDE.
What it would require is some custom work, basically fulfilling all these steps:
Acquire a custom resource manager that handles TMX resource files.
Put all your localizable strings in a TMX file.
Make this TMX file an embedded resource in your project.
In your Form constructor, create your TMX ResourceManager, loading the TMX file from your embedded resources.
In your code, use your tmx ResourceManager instead of the default ResourceManager for getting localized strings.
Let the Form use the default ResourceManager for getting all the designer things except the strings.
Get your TMX file fleshed out with the new language translations.
More can be added in the next release of your project, just by adding them to this TMX file before you compile.
RESOURCES: (not an exhaustive list, by any means)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_Memory_eXchange
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tmx-editor/
The right way to do this is, suppose you want to add Arabic support witch is RightToLeft language:
Double click the form
Set localizable prop. to true
Change Language prop. to Arabic //This will automatically open a new version of the form so you can customize.
Set RightToLeft prop. to Yes
Set RightToLeftLayout prop. to True
Start renaming controls, and save the form.
Handle Messages/Errors in code // Sorry I don't have a quick solution for now, try duplicate them and If/Else the current local.
We have a resource file with lots of translated strings used various places in our application. Is there a better way for binding for example the text of a button to a certain string?
Currently we are usually just doing something like this in the constructor, in a Load event handler or in a method called by one of those:
someButton.Text = CommonTexts.SomeString;
someMenuItem.Text = CommonTexts.SomeOtherString;
Is there a better way to do it? Maybe in the designer? Or is this the recommended way of doing it?
Just to let you know how we do the actual translation: We have one Class Library project which only contains resx files. The main resx files are written in english (of course). We then open up those base resx files in an application called ResEx where we (or someone else) does the translation to other languages. When compiled Visual Studio automatically creates assemblies for each language which are used automatically depending on the current culture set. This works pretty well, so I don't really need info on how to do the translation and such (although I am always curious to improvements of course). What I am asking is if there is a better way for getting those translated strings from the resource assembly and into all the various Text properties.
I understand, it's an old question, but still, I had the same issue (VS 2010), and one of the first links in google is this topic.
In order to move all the texts to forms resource file - you need to set the winform Localizable property to True. And that's it. :)
(c) Cap. O.
You can do:
using System.Resources;
using System.Reflection;
Assembly assembly = this.GetType().Assembly;
resman = new ResourceManager("StringResources.Strings", assembly);
btnButton.Text = resman.GetString("ButtonName");
There is a good tool called LingoBit Localizer that does the job for the fraction of the time it would take to build all the reasources files.
You don't have to care about other languages while in development process, you simply code and set properties as you would if you were programming for a unilingual software. After you're done, or whenever you wish, you run LingoBit Localizer over your DLL or Windows Form application. This will get user-displayable strings out to a grid for you within its GUI. Now, perhaps a professional translator could use to translate the words if your programmers don't know the language for which the applicaiton have to be translated. Then, you simply save the project when you're done. This will create a DLL file which you simply add to your binary deployment directory, then your application will automatically set itself to the right language depending on the current culture information on which the app. is installed or so. This saves a lot of programming time and headaches.
Hope this helps even though it is not resource-based solution.
This will extract the the value of Home keyword and populate into the Text1 Box.
Text1.Text= Resource.Home.ToString();
Try this:
someButton.DataBindings.Add("Text", CommonTexts, "SomeString");
Your way is the best way to do this if you have developers who are not personally fluent in the languages you're translating your application into. I've done this before with an English application that had to be translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese (I only speak one of these semi-fluently). The original forms were all created in English, and in the form's Load event the code iterated through every control and searched for each control's Text property in a translations spreadsheet, and replaced it with the appropriate translation.
The built-in way of internationalizing a form (which is basically a variant of form inheritance) assumes that the programmer is fluent in the language you need to translate to, which is pretty much of a stretch, and it requires you to manually enter all the translated text values for each form and each language. It also makes your binary larger (potentially much larger), since it adds a .resx file for each form for each language that you support.