i18n blog

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Choosing the right language for web applications is not quite an easy task. There are many source of information and you have to figure a good algorithm for making the best decision. As I didn’t found yet the “right” implementation I decided to describe the algorithm.

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Clearly adding images for representing languages is not the most important internationalization issue someone can make. In fact I added #1 because this is the first internationalization mistake I decided to blog about and I want to document many more mistakes in the future. (more…)

Over the time I’ve found that there are misunderstandings between the concept of the keyboard shortcuts and mnemonics. I will try to clarify this problem because the differences are important specially from the point of view of software localization. (more…)

If you want to minimize the number of bugs reported for your web application you should know that codepages are domain of the past. If you want to create multi-language web content all you have to remember is that you should use UTF-8 encoding everywhere. (more…)

When I’m talking about keyboard shortcuts to things like Ctrl-S or even one key shortcuts like ‘A’ (used to Archive an email on Gmail). On the other side the mnemonics, known as hotkeys or the underlined letters in menus or other GUI controls are clearly something that should be localized and I not going to argue about this. (more…)

On Windows, keyboard events are reporting scan codes, virtual key codes and characters. If you want to deal with keyboard shortcuts and be able to use them in an international context you have to use the virtual key codes. (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.

Întrucât multă lume se lovește de problema characterelor românești m-am gândit să clarific câteva lucruri atât pentru utilizatori cât și pentru programatori. (more…)

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…)