New version : appTranslator 1.2

I just released appTranslator 1.2.

New features include:

• Auto-translation of common terms in dialogs and menus (File, Open, Save, OK, Cancel,...) and standard MFC resources. appTranslator now translates these resources on the fly (up to 24 languages available).
• Find&Replace command.
• Professional Edition users can now restrict the rights of their translators: The Build command and/or the Dialog Layout mode can now be disabled for translators.

Fixes include:

• Wrong behaviour of the 'do not translate' flag in dialogs sometimes occured.
• Windows CE: Satellite DLLs could not be loaded on target machines.

The demo version can be downloaded from the usual location. Registered users with a support contract will receive the upgrade later today.

"They shared one large eyebrow between them"

In the unlikely case you missed Rory's last post, just stop whatever you might be doing right now and go read it. In the mean time, excuse me while I go ROFL.

(Avec toutes mes excuses aux Québecois ;-)

MS Sans Serif: I didn't get it quite right

Translation: I got it wrong.

MichKa took on with my previous post and explains why I'm plain wrong (even though he tells it very diplomatically ;-).

Michael's reader Joseph Bruno summarizes the behaviour of MS Sans Serif font :

- MS Sans Serif is not limited to Western European characters
- MS Sans Serif is limited to characters in the ANSI codepage of the current system locale.

In other words, this means that you can use MS Sans Serif to display Polish but it will work only if your system locale (aka Language for non-Unicode programs) is set to Polish (or another language using the same ANSI codepage). Which makes it difficult for you to test since switching the system locale is not a light thing (Would the font work correctly under AppLocale ? Switching to another user with the right settings using FUS might be another option if you are not connected to a domain. I'd have to check.).

Also, I overlooked the availability of Microsoft Sans Serif on the different versions of Windows. It looks like it's available only on Windows 2000 and XP (Huh! Not even on Windows 2003 ?). Be careful if you need to be compatible with older platforms.

Oh My!

MS Sans Serif: Not a nice international player

I wanted to translate my app to Polish and I noticed that some of my dialog items were cropped. How come ?

This appTranslator user developed his app in English using Visual C++ 6.0. This version of VC++ uses MS Sans Serif as the default dialog font. The problem is that this font supports the Western European code page only.When one adds an Eastern European language such as Polish, appTranslator realizes that the font will not display correctly in Polish hence replaces the default dialog font by Tahoma.Now Tahoma is a _little_ bit wider than MS Sans Serif, resulting in long source text items being cropped, especially if the controls were really just wide enough to display the text.

Is this a problem ?

Well, not really since as soon as you translate an item, appTranslator resizes it (if it's not wide enough). The problem kind of auto-fixes itself.

Can one avoid this problem ?

Yes. If you remain concerned, there is something else you can do: Microsoft created a enhanced version of MS Sans Serif : Microsoft Sans Serif (sic!). This font is a Unicode font containing a lot more characters and supporting many more charsets, including Eastern European languages, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek,...

As far as Western European characters are concerned, they are exactly the same in both fonts.
Therefore, you can simply replace occurences of MS Sans Serif by Microsoft Sans Serif in your resource scripts. Or you can set this font as the default font for the intended language in appTranslator.

Of course, using 'MS Shell Dlg' is an even better idea.