WEBDEV Concepts

134 Part 4: Advanced concepts Multilingual sites in practice 1 Overview A multilingual site can be distributed in several languages. The different languages of the site will be taken into account during the different development steps. The main steps for developing a multilingual site are as follows: 1. Choosing the languages supported by the project and the analysis. 2. Entering the project elements (pages, code, etc.) in the different project languages. 3. Defining the project language programmatically. 4. Managing specific character sets in the data files. 5. Creating the library and the setup program. Remarks : • If the operating system supports several languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, etc.), the corresponding character set will be automatically used when translating to these languages. • If your site is multilingual, this feature must also be managed in the User Groupware pages and in the HFSQL automatic error handling pages. For more details, see the online help. • HFSQL data files and page controls support the Unicode standard. 2 Choosing the languages supported by the project and the analysis 2.1 Languages supported by the project The different languages supported by the project are defined in the project description: 1. On the "Project" tab, in the "Project" group, click "Description". The project description window appears. 2.  In the "Languages" tab, you can add or delete the languages supported by the project. The selected languages will be available for all multilingual resources that can be translated (captions of controls, menu options, help messages associated with a control, etc). When changing the project language, changes will be automatically taken into account: • for new elements or objects created in the WEBDEV editor, • for all elements or objects opened in the WEBDEV editor. The main language corresponds to the language used by default at runtime. Language options The "Languages" tab of the project description also allows you to define all language-specific options: number, currency, date, etc. Windows language options are used by default (these options can be found in the Windows control panel). When creating an Edit control or a column of a Table control that displays numeric data (numbers, currencies, dates, times, durations, etc.), the input mask defined in the project language options will be automatically used. This option is available in pages. At runtime , when an Edit control or a column in a Table control has a mask "Defined by the project", the input/display mask will automatically adapt according to the options selected in the project for the language displayed at runtime. Remark : The language options also allow you to define the writing direction and the character set used ("Miscellaneous" option).