CodeMine Message Manager

The CodeMine Framework includes a full featured multi-lingual message and context help manager. All system messages and other embedded text strings use the message manager for local language translations. That means the framework can easily be adapted to create applications in any single language. Forms for editing message translations are available in the Development Environment, and may also be included in your finished applications to allow end users to edit the message text.

For applications that need to dynamically support more than one language, the CodeMine Framework can be used together with Steven Black’s INTL Toolkit.

Languages
The Message Manager supports an unlimited number of developer-defined languages. Each language defines the name of the language, as well as the date, number, and currency display information associated with the language. The language definition form is shown below.

The Message Manager also supports language "subclassing". This technique is useful for supporting various dialects of a language, where the bulk of the text translations will be the same as the parent language. The "Based On" field in the language dialog allows you to specify the parent language.

Dialog Messages
Dialog Message definitions are used to define the dialog style and text translations for all system error and confirmation dialogs. The dialog editing form is shown below.

The Message Manager also supports a flexible set of message parameter directives. These allow you to insert strings or numbers at arbitrary positions inside a message string - similar to the C sprintf() function.

Help Messages
Context Help Message definitions contain localizable name, tooltip, and statusbar text, as well as a formatted Rich Text context help message. These help message definitions can then be associated with individual cursor fields, or with controls on a form. The help message editor form is shown here.

These help message definitions provide a common point for maintaining the localizable text normally associated with each field displayed on a form. To keep performance fast, the actual text translation for each field is performed on-demand, as each field gets focus, or in the background during idle time. This gives full functionality at a very low cost in performance.