[AccessD] Developing European Applications

Hi Paul

I'm from Belgium and have some experience with that in Access.
I got my musterd years ago from the ATM sample application in VB5/6
thats give a good demonstration how to do that.
You gonna need to programmatic replace the captions by a text coming
from a table that you load into a collection when opening the app. You
can do this by setting some code or number in the tag property (as I do
in Access) or use some kind of coding to name your controls. This does
slow down the loding of forms but it is unnoticable if have have a
normal amount of controls on your forms. Further more it is best to have
a table or registry sayying which language to use for that specific
user. Do not base yourself to the windows language or country settings
because that is not ideal.
Please take note that Netherlands Dutch  and Belgian Dutch are
technicaly the same language bur there is a serious difference in the
choice of words. Iow if you want to be pa pro, you gonna need a Belgian
dutch and a Netherlands dutch version.
And don't forget 40% Of belgian is French speaking. So if this client is
for instance located in Brussel, you gonna need the ability to have
French and Dutch (and probably English to) depending on the logged in
user.
A Lot of Multinational companies in Belgium do force English as the
software language, so maybe you don't need the translation. >>> should
ask the customer. 
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Both Dutch and French are longer languages. You
should pay attention to the lenght of your controls (captions, Titles
etc) because Dutch and French are by average +/- 40 % longer then
English.
This can be problematic if you did not developped with that in mind.


An other issue is paperformat. In europe mainland we tend to use A4
instead of lettre or legal.
If your reports are based on lettre, you should not have a problem
because it is shorter then A4, you could have complaints of the "green"
guys telling you thats a waste of paper.
Legal is longer than A4 and you could run into problems.

For what concerns showing data  based on a field, that is a tough one.
You gonna need to have multiple extra fields in product desciptions etc
etc for each language you use. This wil result in some major
reprogramming.

I don't know what kind of app you have, but there is in Belgium also
some legal issues conernign use of languages on official documents like
an invoice. For instance it is forbidden if you are a Flemisch (Dutch)
Company to send a French Invoice to a French customer that lives in the
French part of Belgium. If you do that this document is illegal and has
no juridic value for a court. But thats the theory...

If any other questions go ahead an shoot.

Greetings

Erwin




 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of
paul.hartland at fsmail.net
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 12:25 PM
To: accessd; dba-vb
Subject: [AccessD] Developing European Applications
Importance: High

To all,

We have a visual basic 6.0 FE, connecting to a SQL Server 2000 database
which all works perfectly well.  However we are moving towards putting
our Belgium & Netherlands offices onto the system.  What I need to know
is how to make my labels/controls/reports etc appear in the local
languages, I would assume this is no easy task but if someone could
point me in the right direction I would be very grateful.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.



Paul Hartland
paul.hartland at fsmail.net
07730 523179
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