Localization in LV8.20?

[becktho]

Hi to you, LV8.20 users

Is it possible in LV8.20 to easily localize a LV app by using methods like VI String.export and VI String.import respectively?

I'm still using LV8.0 and this may be a little motivation for upgrading my system.

Thomas

[Evrem_Y]

Hi Thomas,

I am not really sure, why you are unhappy with the import/export methods in LV 8.0. If you have upgraded such an application from 7.1 or older, then you may get some issue, like described in the LV Release Notes (page 25). But LV 8.20 has no enhancements here.

Regarding localizing your application you will not get that much motivation to upgrade, but there are a lot of other nice feature available.

Best Regards,

Evrem

[becktho]

The point is that I have not yet found a dynamic way which is available at runtime in a built application (for that reason I developed a simple library) to change the language of a LV user interface.

[Jimmie_A.]

Hello!

The functions you mentioned are not settable when the VIs are running so you would still need to have a top layer performing these actions through VI server and the start the execution of the VIs in question. Export function loads the frontpanel whiles the import function loads both the frontpanel and the blockdiagram.

[becktho]

Do you know of some mechanism that will be available in a future version of LV?

[Ben]

Hi Thomas,

I have nver been happy with the export import strings functionality myself.

For multilingual applications I have used the technique of only showing the captions of controls and hiding all of the labels.

At start up time I check the langauge and write all of the captions with the proper text. I admit that this can be complicated after the fact (ie application already developed).

But if you find the crazy thread where JLV was trying to dynamically find all of the controls in a global VI, you will get some hints how to get all of the control references. From there you JUST have to feed the proper set of strings to the captions.

Trying to help,

Ben

[johnsold]

Thanks, Ben,

I have just been working on my first bilingual program and am using much the same approach you described. Nice to have confirmation that I am on the right track.

Lynn

[becktho]

@Ben: Hi

The way you described, is similar to what I currently do. I made a library, with all this functionality inside. If I place these vis in a vi of a program, they first check if a translation file for the current vi exists. If not, I create one. For each control in the vi I dynamically generate a file entry (also recursively - clusters of clusters of clusters...). Finally it works, but I'd prefer some built in support.

I don't know where these export/import functions originate from, but I don't think they are very useful. Ok - those who do not build applications but only run the vi in the IDE would be able to use it.

Anyway - I'll have to wait for the next release of LV.

Thomas

[TCPlomp]

besides the language, you also have localization errors, decimal sign, date formatting, these are harder to track down.

Ton

[becktho]

But I can (or at least I hope I can) rely on LV to handle date and decimal sign and other things correctly.