I was surprised to discover that creating Unicode UI elements in the resource editor of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (SP1) does work, BUT when you compile your application they will fail to display well. (more…)
If you’ll ever try to use automation for testing globalization readiness on applications you are going to discover that the keyboard input API does not have any function for entering Unicode texts. If you’ll try to use VkKeyScan for converting an Unicode character to a virtual key – in order to map it to a keystroke – you’ll discover that the Windows Keyboard Input API will return you nothing because current keyboard layout is not able to produce the requested character.
You could the clipboard for inserting Unicode text but be aware that thin method does not enable you to test real keyboard input. If you are not using standard windows controls you have to test quite a few different keyboard layouts.
One common error in internationalization is to think that all shortcuts must be translated. People forgot that one of the major advantages of the shortcuts is that they are memorized their position on the keyboard and not by the sign on the key. (more…)
If you have a localized application, at some stage you’ll discover that you need to localize filenames – for example if you have a set of template files. This is quite a tricky problem because it’s very hard to maintain a list of localized files and you can’t use diff tools for comparing them because they have different names.
It’s a good idea to keep the filenames not localized but to “localize” them on-the-fly – only when you show them to the user. (more…)
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