Symbian3/SDK/Source/GUID-9EA7B72B-8394-48B8-A0CC-4BB34CBDB01C.dita
author Dominic Pinkman <Dominic.Pinkman@Nokia.com>
Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:11:55 +0100
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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<!-- Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies) All rights reserved. -->
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<!-- This component and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the License 
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"Eclipse Public License v1.0" which accompanies this distribution, 
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and is available at the URL "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html". -->
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<!-- Initial Contributors:
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    Nokia Corporation - initial contribution.
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Contributors: 
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-->
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<!DOCTYPE concept
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  PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "concept.dtd">
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<concept id="GUID-9EA7B72B-8394-48B8-A0CC-4BB34CBDB01C" xml:lang="en"><title>UI text
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strings</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>
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<p>Mobile device users can select the language used by their devices for
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UI texts. Symbian platform native applications typically use these language
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settings to determine which language is displayed when an application is launched.
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The language used in your application depends on how you have implemented
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your UI texts:</p>
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<ul>
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<li><p><i>Recommended</i>: In the recommended approach, text strings
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in resource files are mapped to logical names in the code. This means that
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your application can switch between different language packs according to
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locale and the wishes of the end-user.</p></li>
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<li><p><i>Not recommended</i>: If you hard code text strings into
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your code, then your application will only be in the language used in the
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code and will not be able to take advantage of the flexibility made available
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by the recommended approach described approach.</p></li>
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</ul>
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<p>In the recommended approach, when the application framework launches
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an application, it loads the application resource file. The application framework
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compares the system locale language setting with the available resource files,
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and loads the resource file whose extension matches the locale language code.
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If there is no match, then the system loads the resource file with the extension <parmname>rsc</parmname>.</p>
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<p>For example, if the language of a device is set to German, then the
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application framework attempts to find a resource file for the application
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with the extension <parmname>r03</parmname>, since <parmname>03</parmname> is
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the code for German. If there is no resource file with a matching extension,
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then the application framework loads the resource file for the application
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with the extension <parmname>rsc</parmname>.</p>
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<p>In order to ensure that your application will be localizable:</p>
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<ul>
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<li><p>Do not embed UI text strings in your code files</p></li>
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<li><p>Do not hard code the size of text buffers</p></li>
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</ul>
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</conbody></concept>