Localisation Overview

Purpose

Localisation allows the Symbian device to handle locale-sensitive information: for example language used and how the date and currency are displayed. This collection makes up what Symbian platform defines as a locale.

On Symbian platform, the locale settings are stored in class TLocale.

Architecture

There are two sets of locale settings, those that are hard-coded into the phone and those that are stored in a locale.dll. The device creator produces both the hard-coded localisation settings and the locale.dll.

Description

The localisation API is used to set locale-sensitive information that can be changed by the user; namely, locale, calendar settings, country code, currency format, date and time format, numerical values and time zone information.

Using Localisation Support

The locale DLL is created by the phone manufacturer and only the settings application provided by the UI vendor can change the settings or values.

The locale setup process is controlled by the EStart component and goes through three phases:

• Set the hard-coded defaults,

• Load the locale from the HAL settings and load the required locale, and

• Request update notifications

The device creator produces both the hard-coded values and the locale.dll.

The locale DLL files are named on the pattern eloc1.XYZ, where XYZ is the language number as defined by TLanguage enumeration defined in e32lang.h.