The document discusses the challenges and processes involved in internationalizing and localizing applications using Visual Basic 6. It covers essential terminology, character sets, encoding, and the importance of adapting applications for various languages and cultural conventions. Key topics include multinationalization, translation, and the technical aspects of managing strings and character input for global usage.

1. Internationalisation and Globalisation Visual Basic 6

2. Alan Dean alan .dean@ retailexperience .co. uk or adean @hotmail.com ©2003

3. Credit to Kaplan “ Internationalisation with Visual Basic” Michael S. Kaplan ISBN 0672319772

4. Credit to Appleman “ Visual Basic Programmer’s Guide to the Win32 API” Dan Appleman ISBN 0672315904

5. Outline “ In a connected world, it is increasingly important to be able to implement solutions for users across the world. Unfortunately, the ability to do this with VB6 is not well documented, requires a lot of effort to understand and is not available 'out of the box'.” http://www.unitoolbox.com

6. Contents The following subjects are covered: Characters Keyboards Fonts (very briefly…) Languages Strings Techniques to code an internationalised application

7. Terminology

8. Terminology – Contents Globalisation Internationalisation (i18N) Multinationalisation (M18N) Translation Localisation (L10N)

9. Internationalisation (i18N) The process of converting an application to be capable of multinationalisation and localisation Culture-specific issues are addressed e.g. conventions, preferences, data formatting Depends upon default system or user preferences Does not require the translation of the text of an application

10. Globalisation The process of designing and developing an application that supports localized user interfaces and regional data for users in multiple cultures .NET Framework Developers Guide

11. Multinationalisation (M18N) The process of converting an application to support multiple cultures A significant enhancement of i18N Multiple language availability, including crossing the code page barrier E.g. Office2000 multilanguage packs (langpacks) and Win2000 multilanguage user interface (MUI)

12. Translation The process of representing the text of an application in another language e.g. dialogs, menus, alerts, documentation etc. For example, the ‘File|Open’ menu item is translated to ‘Fichier|Ouvrir’ in French Microsoft International Word List Converts the meaning and sense of the text, not just the words

13. Beware Babelfish! “ Insert the boot disk into Drive A” Translate from English to German using Babelfish “ Legen Sie die Boot Diskette in Laufwerk A ein” which means “ Insert the charge disk in Propulsion A” “ Setzen Sie die Aufladung Scheibe in Antrieb A ein” is the correct translation

14. Localisation (L10N) The process of converting an application to adhere to the local culture of a user

15. Terminology - Summary Explained some of the general terms used around internationalisation Discussed the scope of the terms used

16. About Characters

17. About Character - Contents Character Repertoires Character Codes & Encoding Character Sets ASCII, ANSI, DBCS, Unicode Windows Character Set Usage

18. Character (definition) character noun … 7. letter or symbol : any written or printed letter, number, or other symbol … Source: Encarta World English Dictionary

19. Character (alternate definition) A character is the atomic unit of textual communication

20. Character Repertoire An abstract set of distinct characters Usually defined by specifying a name and sample presentation of each character The ordering of characters for sorting purposes is not defined Either: Fixed (e.g. English), or Open (e.g. Unicode, Chinese)

21. Character Repertoire (English) The character repertoire of English contains Alphabet Upper case A ‘A’ … Lower case Z ‘z’ Punctuation Period . Ellipses … Comma , Semicolon ; Colon : Question Mark ? Exclamation Point ! Quotation Marks “” Parentheses () Apostrophe ‘ Hyphen -

22. Character Repertoires

23. Character Code A mapping between an unsigned integer and a character e.g. 65=‘A’ The VB Functions Chr$(…) and Asc(…) address this mapping e.g. Chr$(65) returns “A” e.g. Asc(“A”) returns 65

24. Character Encoding The process of collating code points by assigning an unsigned integer to each character in a repertoire The output of encoding is a character set The values assigned imply ordering of the character set, but the ordering may not be meaningful

25. Character Set An encoded character repertoire There are a large number of character sets Character sets are not language specific e.g. Latin Alphabet No.1 (ISO 8859-1)

26. ASCII Character Set

27. ANSI Character Sets

28. Double-byte Character Sets (DBCS) aka MBCS (Multi-byte character set) Because first 128 characters single-byte encoded as ANSI Additional characters double-byte encoded Double-byte encoding the first (or ‘lead’) byte signals that both itself and the next byte are to be interpreted as a single character

29. Double-byte character

30. DBCS Example

31. Unicode Character Set All characters as double-byte encoded (as far as Windows is concerned anyway: UCS-2/UTF-16) Although DBCS and Unicode both use double-byte encoding, the mapping differs All characters in the Unicode character set are given a unique value

32. Character Set Comparison

33. Character Repertoires Revisited

34. Windows Character Set Usage 16-bit Windows use ANSI character sets Known as Code Pages 32-bit Windows use Unicode

35. Windows Code Page A table of 256(+) code points for a language First 128 code points are the same (the ASCII table of non-printing and English characters) Next 128(+) are used for non-English characters needed by the language Based on ANSI character sets

36. Windows Code Page 1252, etc. http://www. microsoft .com/ globaldev /reference/ sbcs /1252. htm

37. About Characters - Summary Explained how characters are gathered into repertoires, and are then encoded into character sets Described the main character sets supported by Windows

38. About Keyboards

39. About Keyboards - Contents Scan Codes Keyboard Layouts Virtual Keys

40. Scan Code A hardware-dependent code sent by a keyboard to indicate a keyboard operation Scan codes can vary between different keyboards

41. Keyboard Layout A definition of the scan codes supported by a keyboard Win3.x have a system-wide layout Win9x and WinNT support multiple layouts on a system-wide and per-thread basis

42. Virtual Key An abstraction of scan codes, so that interpretation of input need not be hardware-specific API Constants exist with VK_ prefix e.g. VK_A

43. From Key to Character

44. Keyboard limitations Keyboards are an effective data entry method for most languages However there are no keyboards for character-based languages because there are no keyboards with thousands of keys… i.e. Far East languages (also known as Chinese/Japanese/Korean, or CJK languages)

45. Input Method Editor (IME) Software to allow the input of CJK characters A group that approximates a character is selected An actual character can then be selected from the group Run by the Input Method Manager (IMM)

46. Japanese IME

47. About Keyboards - Summary Explained how keystrokes become characters Briefly discussed non-keyboard input

48. About Fonts

49. About Fonts - Contents Character-based systems Graphic-based systems Glyphs & Fonts

50. Character-based Systems Such systems display characters only

51. Graphic-based Systems Such systems display glyphs, not characters

52. Glyph A glyph is a graphical representation of a character

53. Font A collection of glyphs

54. About Fonts - Summary Discussed the difference between character-based and graphic-based systems Briefly discussed the representation of characters by glyphs and fonts

55. About Languages

56. About Languages - Contents Languages Locales

57. Language (definition) language noun 1. speech of group : the speech of a country, region, or group of people, including its diction, syntax, and grammar … Source: Encarta World English Dictionary

58. Locale A specific international market where a target user is working Encompasses localisation issues: e.g. conventions, culture, language, preferences including formatting of numbers, currencies, etc. phraseology can vary also

59. Locale Identifier (LCID) A 32-bit unsigned integer that identifies the locale for the system or thread Commonly pronounced el-sid

60. LCID Structure

61. LCID Language Language Identifier A combination of the primary and secondary language identifiers Primary Language Identifier Represents the language itself (e.g. ‘English’) Secondary Language Identifier Represents the country or region where the language is spoken (e.g. ‘English as spoken in the United Kingdom’)

62. LCID Sorting Sort Identifier Represents the order in which characters are to be sorted (usually the default) Sort Version Currently unused (it is reserved and must be set to 0)

63. Locale Coverage Windows does not have locales for all possible language / region combinations In fact, almost without exception, a locale is only supported if there is a country or region that speaks the language For example there is no locale for Esperanto, Coptic or Latin and certainly not for Klingon!

64. Locale Usage Settings associated with Locales are heavily used by Windows, COM and VB So, the current Locale fundamentally affects the processing of information on a system Settings are accessed by the Regional Options control panel

65. About Languages - Summary Discussed the relationship between languages and locales Explained the structure of the locale identifier

66. About Strings

67. About Strings - Contents C Strings VB Strings VB String calls to COM and Win32 API functions

68. String An array of characters Not a primitive datatype A number of string datatypes exist e.g. LPSTR, BSTR, etc.

69. Pointer to String (LPSTR) C datatype Null-terminated Used extensively throughout the Windows API

70. Basic String (BSTR) COM datatype, used by VB internally Unicode pointer to a block of memory prefixed by a length encoding representing the size of the string A contract for creation (allocation) A contract for destruction (deallocation) An API

71. VB COM Calls Both VB and COM use Unicode, so strings are not transposed into alternate character sets

72. VB Win32 API Calls Character encoding VB and WinNT use Unicode encoding, but Win9x uses ANSI encoding Unfortunately VB does not know the encoding expected on the target API call Strings are therefore encoded as ANSI Thus the call succeeds both on Win9x and WinNT, but this wasteful on WinNT…

73. VB Win9x API Call

74. VB WinNT API Call

75. VB WinNT API Call (Unicode)

76. About Strings - Summary Discussed C and VB strings Explained how COM and Win32 API string function calls are transacted

77. An Internationalised App

78. 1.0.1 ‘ Plain vanilla’ VB Standard EXE

79. 2.0.2 1 st attempt to internationalise Addition of resource file

80. 2.1.2 2 nd attempt to internationalise Isolate persistent strings

81. 2.2.2 3 rd attempt to internationalise Parameterise resource strings

82. 2.2.3 4 th attempt to internationalise Loading with current LCID By setting thread locale

83. 3.0.4 5 th attempt to internationalise Loading with current LCID (again…) By loading resources directly

84. 3.1.5 6 th attempt to internationalise Loading with current LCID (yet again!) By employing satellite resource

85. 3.1.6 5 th attempt to internationalise Loading all strings from satellite resources

86. Conclusion Covered Characters, Keyboards, Fonts, and Languages Explained Strings and the usage of Strings Coded a simple internationalised application

87. Thank You alan .dean@ retailexperience .co. uk or adean @hotmail.com ©2003