TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2003-05 > 1052274049


From: Robin Lamacraft <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] Language strategies
Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 11:51:38 +0930
References: <000901c313f2$a5e92800$4302a8c0@Cheasa>
In-Reply-To: <000f01c3143a$b2811ad0$47307240@fshrertk604758>


At 18:47 6/05/03 -0700, Frank wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Teresa Ghee Elliott [mailto:]
> > Jumping in here. <G>
>
>Feel free to jump anytime :-)
>
> > Frank, not sure exactly what you want,
> > but this might be a case for a language for a certain KIND of
> > report, like Terry and I discussed last week. The easiest
> > way would be create your language for the journal reports,
> > and then copy that language to a new language for the Chart
> > type reports and then just change the sentence structures for
> > the tags to use your symbols. Then if you wanted to say use
> > German in a Journal report, you would use your German
> > language, and when you wanted German, but with symbols, you
> > would use your custom GERMAN-symbols language. Am I helping
> > any or am I confusing you more? <G>

I think that the major problem in the multi-language facilities in TMG is
the current way that language updates are carried out in the upgrade from
one version to the next.

The way that the strings.dbf is constructed (all languages in one file) and
it is updated will always give the users of user-customized languages a
problem. If you update the languages on the upgrade you loose (or at least
have some extra work and management to re-instate) your changes. If you
don't update the language file then some items in a non-English interface
will not be translated.

To my mind this area probably should be re-visited once the CD for v5 is
out. I would like there to be an "out of the box" language column for
English (UK). I suspect that many users would like the ability to merge
their custom language translations on the update from one version to the
next in preference to the current all or nothing approach.

I see problems for the developers in trying to build this feature into the
version update process. I would suggest that the update should make a
backup copy of the current strings.dbf, then overwrite the current one with
the update. On re-opening of TMG after such an update, a Language
Management utility should open to allow the user to re-incorporate their
additional languages and translations with as little effort as possible.

Possibly the languages should be held as separate files (one for each US
English to language translation) to make exchange of languages easier
between users. Then TMG would combine current set into the working
translation file (to retain the efficiency of a single lookup) when
actually operating.

Just my re-valued $0.02 worth!

Robin Lamacraft (Adelaide, Australia)

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