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<concept id="GUID-9EA7B72B-8394-48B8-A0CC-4BB34CBDB01C" xml:lang="en"><title>UI text

strings</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>

<p>Mobile device users can select the language used by their devices for

UI texts. Symbian platform native applications typically use these language

settings to determine which language is displayed when an application is launched.

The language used in your application depends on how you have implemented

your UI texts:</p>

<ul>

<li><p><i>Recommended</i>: In the recommended approach, text strings

in resource files are mapped to logical names in the code. This means that

your application can switch between different language packs according to

locale and the wishes of the end-user.</p></li>

<li><p><i>Not recommended</i>: If you hard code text strings into

your code, then your application will only be in the language used in the

code and will not be able to take advantage of the flexibility made available

by the recommended approach described approach.</p></li>

</ul>

<p>In the recommended approach, when the application framework launches

an application, it loads the application resource file. The application framework

compares the system locale language setting with the available resource files,

and loads the resource file whose extension matches the locale language code.

If there is no match, then the system loads the resource file with the extension <parmname>rsc</parmname>.</p>

<p>For example, if the language of a device is set to German, then the

application framework attempts to find a resource file for the application

with the extension <parmname>r03</parmname>, since <parmname>03</parmname> is

the code for German. If there is no resource file with a matching extension,

then the application framework loads the resource file for the application

with the extension <parmname>rsc</parmname>.</p>

<p>In order to ensure that your application will be localizable:</p>

<ul>

<li><p>Do not embed UI text strings in your code files</p></li>

<li><p>Do not hard code the size of text buffers</p></li>

</ul>