Tony Jones wrote:
I am attempting to write a multi-window GUI for customers in several
countries.
As such, I'd like to be able to have them select the language to be
used on a welcome screen, and then set the text on all the succeeding
pages depending on what is chosen. This would include titles,
tooltips, button text and so on. I can't immediately see any way to
do this. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
One idea would be to have the all of the strings that your program uses
in an cell array. Anytime you need to access a particular bit of text
in your GUI, access it from the array. (No hardcoded text anywhere in
your code) An easy way to do this would be to setup an array of
constants that are the offsets into the cell array of text strings.
A simple example....
%In English:
language={'Enter a Number '; 'That''s not a number'; 'Are you sure?' };
QUESTION1 = 1;
RESPONSE1 = 2;
RESPONSE2 = 3;
disp(language(QUESTION1))
disp(language(RESPONSE1))
disp(language(RESPONSE2))
%In my version of French (Sorry if its wrong):
language={'Ecrivez un nombre'; 'Ce n''est pas un nombre'; 'Etes-vous sur?'};
disp(language(QUESTION1))
disp(language(RESPONSE1))
disp(language(RESPONSE2))
Once you get the GUI working in one language, save the cell array of
text strings as a MAT file with a name indicating which language it
contains.
Then, when you want to deploy the program in a different language,
translate the strings in that cell array, and store that away in a
different MAT file whose name indicates the language it contains. The
name of the cell array must be the same for both languages since your
GUI will be coded referring to the cell array name ('language' in the
example above.)
So, as your system runs and the user selects their preferred language,
load the appropriate MAT file and the correct language will be used in
the GUI.
I would not want to convert the strings and create multiple versions of
the code. That would be a maintenance headache. This way, you just
have to maintain one set of code and the multiple language files. If
you need to deploy the application in a different language, you just
create a new MAT file and use the exact same code base.
Of course it's extra work to do it this way, but if you need to deploy
in multiple languages, IMO this is the least amount of work in the long
run, and the most robust.
I worked for a software company that basically did their
internationalization this way. They just shipped off the files with the
English text in it to various companies that then translated the strings
and sent them back. Instant French, German, Swedish, etc.....
Hope that makes sense......
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