Microsoft .NET Development Platform Internationalization

Microsoft .NET Development Platform Internationalization Rishi Kothari Jyothi Prasad

.NET Internationalization Overview

The .NET Framework provides a rich set of object class libraries, integrated into its Common Language Runtime. This framework enables developers to program against a single object model that works across multiple programming languages, operating systems, and cultures/locales.

Visual Studio .NET builds on this foundation, providing a unified development environment for both Windows and .NET Framework. Its solid Unicode and international support allows for the rapid development of globally-aware Windows and Web applications.

.NET Internationalization Agenda

.NET Framework

Globalization namespace

Culture-sensitive classes

Resource model

ASP .NET

International support

Localization options

Visual Studio .NET

Unicode support

Windows and Web Form international support

Windows and Web Form localization

References

.NET Framework Background

Microsoft's platform for building, deploying, operating and integrating XML Web services

Rich XML, standard protocols, stateless

Cross-language development

Common language runtime

Common type system for all languages

Rich runtime environment

Rich class libraries (.NET Framework)

Base class libraries, ADO.NET and XML

Windows Forms for rich, Win32 applications

Web application platform ASP.NET

Easier to deploy, run, & maintain applications

For components, versioning, availability

. NET Framework Globalization

Unicode internally

UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoding classes

Surrogates & Combining characters support

Character type information

Carries NLS+ classes, sorting tables

Consistent results on Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, Windows Millennium, Windows 98

Limitations on down-level Unicode support:

Underlying operating system limitations

File I/O (Windows code pages)

Some Win9x controls are ANSI-only

.NET Framework Namespace s System System.Data System.Xml System.Web Globalization Diagnostics Configuration Collections Resources Reflection Net IO Threading Text ServiceProcess Security Design ADO SQLTypes SQL XPath XSLT Runtime InteropServices Remoting Serialization Serialization Configuration SessionState Caching Security Services Description Discovery Protocols UI HtmlControls WebControls System.Drawing Imaging Drawing2D Text Printing System.WinForms Design ComponentModel

.NET Framework System.Globalization

Includes classes for functionality such as:

Culture-aware string comparison

AABC vs. ABCC (ordinal: codepoint values)

Coté vs. Côte (culture dependent)

Date & Time formatting

yy/mm/dd vs. dd/mm/yy

Numeric formatting

12,000.00 vs. 12.000,00

Calendars

Gregorian and non-Gregorian

Starting point : CultureInfo class

.NET Framework System.Globalization. CultureInfo

Cultural preferences provider

Two roles

CurrentCulture

Date and number formatting

String comparison and casing

…

CurrentUICulture

Resource selection for user interface

Can be controlled on a per thread basis

CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture

Optional mapping from neutral to specific

.NET Framework System.Globalization. CultureInfo (continued)

RFC 1766 derived hierarchy

Invariant culture

Culture-invariant default

Neutral culture

Based on language

Resource only

CurrentUICulture only

Specific culture

Based on language & region

Resource & Formatting specifics

CurrentCulture & CurrentUICulture

invariant de de-AT de-CH de-DE de-LI de-LU en

.NET Framework CultureInfo.InvariantCulture

For UI, culture-sensitive formatting preferred

F or wire-transfer or data storage, a stable, culture- neutral format may be preferred:

#,###.##

dd MMMM yyyy HH:mm:ss GMT

international currency symbol

Use CultureInfo.InvariantCulture

.NET Framework Setting Cultures Explicitly

CurrentUICulture

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(“ja”)

CurrentCulture

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(“ja-JP”)

CreateSpecificCulture

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(Request.UserLanguages(0))

Within an individual API that takes a culture

Str = DateTime.Now.ToString( C ultureInfo);

.NET Framework Culture-aware classes

Any API that takes a culture or IFormatProvider

Culture-sensitive by default

Examples (see Appendix for more info) :

System.Globalization.CompareInfo

System.Globalization.StringInfo

System.Globalization.Calendar

System.Resources

System.DateTime

System.String

.NET Framework System.Globalization.CultureInfo Demo

.NET Framework System.Resources namespace

ResourceManager

Provides access to culture-correct resources at runtime

ResourceWriter

Writes resources to an output stream or file

ResourceReader

Reads resources name-value pairs from resources files and streams

ResourceSet

Stores all resources localized for a particular culture

.NET Framework Resource generation process

.resx file

XML-based

Describes resources

.resources file

Binary compiled file

Satellite .resources.dll

Embedded .resources file(s)

.resx file .resources file .resources.dll file

.NET Framework Naming conventions

Naming pattern conventions

.resources files:

<myproject>.<xx-XX>.resources

Satellite assemblies

<myproject>.resources.dll

Directory locations for satellites:

A subdirectory per culture

either neutral or specific cultures can be used

Myproject.dll

demyproject.resources.dll (neutral)

de-DEmyproject.resources.dll (specific)

.NET Framework Loading resources

Loads requested resources based on Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture

Creating a Resource Manager

RM constructor indicates which file to load resource from

Alternatives:

Load from a loose .resources file

Load from this assembly

Load from another assembly

Load from a custom resource format, using own resource manager (e.g. a database)

See .NET SDK, Samples and Tutorials, ASP.NET QuickStarts, and How Do I … samples

.NET Framework Resource fallback

Main Assembly

Code

Default resources (fallback)

Greeting=“Hello”

Farewell=“Goodbye”

Logo=<graphic data>

French

No code

“ fr” resources

Greeting = “Bonjour”

Farewell = “Au revoir”

French (France) (fr-FR)

No code

“ fr-FR” resources

Greeting=“Salut”

.NET Framework

Resource model

ASP .NET

Visual Studio .NET

Unicode support

References

ASP.NET International support

Delivers improved support for international application development:

Can leverage .NET Framework base classes

System.Globalization

System.Text (encodings)

System.Resources

Can separate resources from source code

Unicode-enabled

More options for specifying encoding

ASP .NET C ulture and e ncoding

Programmatically

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture =……….

Page directive

<%@Page ResponseEncoding=“utf-8” %>

Configuration file (web.config)

Per application or per machine

<globalization

culture=“de-DE”

fileEncoding=“utf-8” />

Most specific setting has precedence:

Programmatic overrides p age d irective

Page d irective overrides c onfiguration file

ASP .NET Localization recommendations

Resources separated from source

Use Resource Manager to load resources

Resources could be in

Loose .resources files

Satellites below each main assembly

A separate (parallel) main assembly with satellites below it

One .resources file or satellite per language

Slightly different ResourceManager constructors for each case

ASP.NET Localization recommendations (continued)

Advantages:

Can deploy additional languages incrementally, without redeploying core code

Lower maintenance costs, as there is one central app, not many parallel versions

Disadvantages:

More files

Loose .resources can have locking issue.

No locking issue for satellites or parallel main assembly with satellites

Shadow-copying done for exes and dlls (main assemblies and satellites)

Samples: ASP.NET Quickstarts, Localization section

Microsoft .NET Framework

Resource model

ASP .NET

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET

Unicode support

References

Visual Studio .NET Unicode support - Development Environment

Development environment is Unicode-enabled, with some exceptions:

resource editor for Win32 resources

some debugger dialogs

some wizards

Source code editor

allows the editing of all scripts including complex scripts

uses font linking to render characters outside the current font

Visual Studio .NET Unicode support - Compilers

Visual Basic .NET, Visual C ♯ .NET and Visual JScript .NET

All use Unicode-encoded source code (UTF-16) as input

Automatic conversion from a range of different character encodings:

Byte-order-mark at the start of the file for detecting UTF-forms

/codepage compiler option for Visual C ♯ .NET and Visual JScript .NET

Managed Extensions for C++

Exception: uses Windows codepages (configurable) and ASCII identifiers

Visual Studio .NET International support for Windows Forms

Windows Forms are Unicode forms on all Windows platforms (some small limitations with legacy controls on Windows 98 and Windows ME)

Windows Forms have a font linking mechanism

Windows Forms support bi-directional layout and complex scripts rendering

Culture-aware controls such as DateTime picker and Calendar

Visual Studio .NET Windows Forms localization – VS .NET Editor

Windows Forms provide localization support:

Every form has a Localizable property

Localizable property set to True :

Project system automatically keeps track of different language versions of a form

Builds the different language forms into satellite assemblies

The resource format used is an XML format (RESX) that gets compiled into a binary format

Any XML localization tool can be used

.NET Development Platform SDK contains a standalone visual editing tool: WinRes

3 rd parties are enabling their localization tools to deal with the new resource formats (Alchemy, Lionbridge)

Visual Studio .NET Web Forms localization – VS .NET Editor

Web Forms designer fully supports flow-layout of ASP .NET pages

.RESX resource format

can be used for string resources

is supported by the project system in the development environment

.NET Framework

Resource model

ASP .NET

Visual Studio .NET

Unicode support

Web Services and Deployment international support

References

References .NET Framework

Documentation

.NET Framework SDK:

Developing World-Ready Applications

Tutorials

Samples

Visual Studio :

Visual Studio.NETVisual Basic and VisualC#Globalizing and LocalizingWalkthroughs

General info on .NET Framework:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/net

http:// www.GotDotNet.com

General info on globalization:

http://www.microsoft.com/ globaldev

References Visual Studio .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/

Visual Studio documentation:

Visual Studio .NETVisual Basic and Visual C#Globalizing and Localizing

Microsoft Layer for Unicode: contained in the July 2001 Platform SDK http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/setuplauncher.asp

References XML & UDDI

W3C XML Protocol Activity

http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)

http:// www.uddi.org /

Appendix .NET Framework Calendar classes

Gregorian Calendar

Hebrew Calendar

Hijiri Calendar

Japanese Calendar

Julian Calendar

Korean Calendar

Taiwan Calendar

Thai Buddhist Calendar

Base Calendar class (derive custom calendars )

Appendix .NET Framework: DateTime & DateTimeFormatInfo c lasses

DateTime

Provides methods that enable culture-sensitive operations on a DateTime.

Use the DateTimeFormatInfo Class to format and display a DateTime based on culture.

DateTimeFormatInfo

Defines how DateTime values are formatted and displayed, depending on the culture.

Appendix .NET Framework: NumberFormatInfo class

NumberFormatInfo

Defines how currency, decimal separator and other numeric symbols are formatted and displayed , based on culture

Appendix .NET Framework: CompareInfo class

CompareInfo

Provides a set of methods that can be used to perfomr culture-sensitive string comparisons

The CultureInfo class has a CompareInfo property that is an instance of the CompareInfo class

The String.Compare method uses the information in the CultureInfo.CompareInfo property to compare strings

Appendix VS .NET: New intl support for native C++ applications

MFC and ATL libraries support the new Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU) for Windows 98 and Windows ME

MFC application wizard provides templates for 9 different languages

ATL Server supports the creation of Unicode ISAPI Web applications and provides locale support in conjunction with the C runtime

Appendix VS .NET: International support for XML Web Services

Based on standard efforts - SOAP and UDDI

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

based on XML and HTTP

globalized data types

UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)

based on SOAP

version 2.0 introduced improvements for i18n

Visual Studio .NET contains support to easily produce, consume, and debug XML Web Services

Appendix VS .NET: International support for Deployment

Visual Studio Deployment projects allow you to create deployment projects in nine languages, including:

English

German

French

Italian

Spanish

Japanese

Korean

Chinese (simplified and traditional)

Microsoft .NET Development Platform Internationalization

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