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Guide to Globalizing Windows Applications

Posted by chrisd on from the we-don't-all-speak-english dept.

JimCricket writes "Does your application need to be usable in multiple countries? Art & Logic has posted a handbook for developers who want to globalize their applications. The handbook gives design and implementation tips, plus code samples for globalization on Windows applications."

5 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Why bother with Win32/MFC now ? by Bazouel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, that's the whole point of .NET !

    MFC is a f*cking mess : no respect of standard, need to discover "hidden" interfaces, break of OO concepts, overuse of macros, bloated, etc. etc. etc. And if you add COM/ATL to that ... well, welcome to hell :)

    And don't even get me started on Win32 API ! That might be fine for some cases where optimization is a top priority (and even then ...), but do you really want to spend at least 50 % of programming time digging for some informations about an obscure function call or simply reinventing the wheel all over again ?

    So while this guide can really be useful for what it's meant for (mostly C++ with MFC), I say, just take a look at C# and .NET and I can guarantee you will not want to go back to those "good old days" where you needed to hand code unicode conversions !

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    Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
    1. Re:Why bother with Win32/MFC now ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Er, because with every MS operating system release there's yet to be a .NET runtime, so you have to consider whether your audience is likely to download 20MB (or whatever it is) and install that before your app - or just go next door for the MFC version.

      And yes, this is the time old decision of when to move, but it's not like you'll even have a quarter of the audience you would programming for the older method.

      Most of the problems you speak of don't exist if you choose the right dev library (open source or not)

  2. Re:"Globalize?" by Twylite · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Where's my moderator points when I need them sigh. One of the reasons good information is becoming hard to find on the 'Net is that everyone wants to invent their own name for something, often because they haven't bothered to research the topic first.

    Internationalization, i18n, and occasionally localization are the accepted terms. Globalization is used in economics, not CS. Mod this guy up!

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    i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
  3. Re:Qt by 'The+'.$L3mm1ng · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Use Qt from Trolltech, give your translator access to Qt Linguist and have it all for free!
    Qt 3 is not free for Windows.
  4. Re:Qt by 'The+'.$L3mm1ng · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Nope. And neither is Windows.
    So why talk about "Qt" and "free" in an article about a "Guide to Globalizing Windows Applications"?