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calling for international developers outside US & UK

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    calling for international developers outside US & UK

    Dear fellow developer,

    Are you an international user of A5 and outside the US & UK ? So here's another call for you since my previous threads' titles did not seem to appeal to many of you...

    How about your thoughts on foreign language support in A5 ? The way A5 now has implemented foreign language support leads us only to "hybrid" kind of translated apps (mixed English & foreign language). I think we need full foreign language support. Alpha Software would for sure benefit by easily doubling their sales. Or is A5 just a US domestic product ? Guess not! So scream it out and reply with your thoughts on full foreign language support.

    Thank you

    Dank u

    Vielen dank

    Merci

    ...
    Frank

    Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand

    #2
    Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

    Hi Vielen,

    Please explain what you mean by "foreign language support".

    I have asked many time over the years that Alpha should be made into an International product.

    Whilst English is the International Language for transport, (airlines and shipping), it is fourth on the list of spoken languages, after Chinese, Spanish and French.

    Just think of the customers Alpha would have if they added just one of those languages!!!!
    Last edited by Keith Hubert; 09-27-2009, 11:52 PM.
    Regards
    Keith Hubert
    Alpha Guild Member
    London.
    KHDB Management Systems
    Skype = keith.hubert


    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

    Comment


      #3
      Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

      Hi, All.

      I'll be glad to switch to Alpha Five if the Alpha FIve included Automatic functions interface is in Spanish.

      Hope Alpha Five take a look in this topic. Still waiting for the Alpha Five staff opinion.

      Regards,


      Rod MG

      Comment


        #4
        Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

        I agree that Alpha would be much more competitive if the product allowed for translation of all aspects into other languages, normally it is not a problem with messages in english when you develop to larger customers, but if you try to sell an application to single users or smaller company's they will not by a program where some information is in their native language(in my cas Danish) and other part in english.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

          Originally posted by Keith Hubert View Post
          Hi Vielen,

          Please explain what you mean by "foreign language support".

          I have asked many time over the years that Alpha should be made into an International product.

          Whilst English is the International Language for transport, (airlines and shipping), it is fourth on the list of spoken languages, after Chinese, Spanish and French.

          Just think of the customers Alpha would have if they added just one of those languages!!!!
          Keith,

          In Belgium a website/webapp that is not in at least dutch & french does not make any sense. I wonder why Alpha announced foreign language support but still leaves a whole lot of hardcoded strings into A5. Opening up to many languages would increase their sales significantly as the US may have borders but the internet does not...

          Frank
          Frank

          Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand

          Comment


            #6
            Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

            Hi Frank,

            You are talking about web pages and this is the desktop section.

            As I see it Alpha have made great progress in allowing for different languages.

            There is also the Google button that will translate your whole page into any language selected in just one click.
            Regards
            Keith Hubert
            Alpha Guild Member
            London.
            KHDB Management Systems
            Skype = keith.hubert


            For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

            Comment


              #7
              Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

              Hi,

              For my daily job, I'm a peoplesoft developer. The way foreign language support is handled on a data level is as follows:

              1. A table (called base table) can have what is called a Related language table which contains the key fields of the basetable with an extra key field, the language code. Then other fields exist in that related language table to contain the items that need to be translated. A typical keyfield is a code that is the primary key.

              2. On the login page, the user can select their language they wish to use.

              3. When a page is shown that contains tables that have a related language table linked to it. The fields that can contain different language data are shown in a yellow color.

              4. At the top of the page, a drop down is shown with 'Data Language', which users can choose to change if they know the translations.

              Now, for transactional data this may seem complex but think of a multilingual website that contains selection dropdowns presenting options in the language of the user. Not only is the label translated but also the values presented. This all without coding. So for prompting selections in different languages
              this is a very interesting feature.

              Peoplesoft goes even further by having effective dating (EFFDT field) that shows the values on and after the date in that field has passed. The 'Active on that date' functionality is also seemless. No coding.

              So, in Alpha Five, when designing a DBF table (or an Active Linked SQL database table). Alpha Software could expand the feature by allowing the user to specify an existing 'Related Language Table'.

              When a fetch is done, the information is shown in the language that is set at login, if no language is specified the default (English) is used an the data comes from the Base table (The main DBF table where the Related Language Table can be linked to).

              For updates an inserts, the way it works is that, when a related language table is specified for a table, on the insert, the insert is done in the Base table AND in the related language table with the LANGUAGE CODE field set to the language that is being used. Same for updates.

              Hope this is a bit clear.

              Cheers
              Steven

              Comment


                #8
                Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                Keith,

                Computer generated translation is good for a few laughs ... and potentially huge embarrassment for the application developer. It's not going to work any time soon.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                  Hi, All.

                  IMHO, it would be enough to have a complete user interface in a language other than english, this includes:

                  - Gennies interface
                  - Automatic functions
                  - Series (Day names, month names, etc.)
                  - Information messages button labels (Acept, cancel )

                  I say it again, I think that if Alpha Five provide a way to localize this information I'll be glad to help in completing the spanish translation.

                  Just my 5 cents.


                  Regards,


                  Rod MG

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                    Here is another hand (or brain)to help in the Spanish translation.

                    Im struggling to convince the IT department to implement Alpha Five as corporative solution in my company (one of the biggest Minery companies in Latin America) and the language barrier is not helping at all.
                    Cheers
                    Mauricio

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                      Talking about international support I think Alpha Software should first of all focus on end user support, for instance:
                      - decimal notation
                      - date formats
                      - error messages
                      - genies
                      I know some things are already supported but for instance the decimal notation is different in our country. We use the point as thousands separator and the comma as decimal separator.

                      For Alpha Software we are the customer but the aim is one step further, our customers!
                      As for developers like us, we should be able to understand English otherwise we would first of all miss out on the message board which I consider a very important source of knowledge and support. I know sometimes it is difficult to understand the full scope of a certain solution or proposal but talking to somebody most certainly helps in solving miscommunication.

                      I think it would be advisable to weigh pro's and con's as far as possible, make a shortlist of wishes and recommendations and submit that to Alpha.

                      As it happens I just returned from a customer who was confronted with an error message, very technical and in English. As he doesn't understand any English it was very difficult to understand what the problem was. His first question was why that line of text was in abacadabra!!!!!!

                      Regards,
                      Jo Hulsen
                      Dommel Valley Solutions
                      The Netherlands

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                        Windows already lets you set date and decimal preferences. If Alpha doesn't recognize those preferences then that should be considered a bug.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                          Rob,

                          I should have explained a bit more about this. As mentioned in my previous post some things are already supported and this is one of them. The issue we have is that users want to use the Num pad to enter amounts. In that case the point on the numeric pad cannot be used as decimal separator. Some conditional keyboard remapping would be welcome.

                          Regards,
                          Jo Hulsen
                          Dommel Valley Solutions
                          The Netherlands

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                            Jo,

                            I guess that you are using a US keyboard. I think the numpad comma comes out correctly if using a Dutch keyboard. Or am I wrong?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: calling for international developers outside US & UK

                              I will more than happy if there was a version that at leats
                              1. Showed errors in Spanish (desktop & WAS)
                              2. The default values in grids where in spanish for things like
                              • Navigation
                              • No records in query
                              • Total records found
                              • Search, Cancel Submit etc buttons
                              • Selector for lookups
                              • Etc. etc


                              Although I know that I can manually translate most of them its just very time consuming and takes away a lot of the advantage of speed of programing in Alpha Five

                              I think that a complete translation of the software is out of the question right now (just see the criticism on documentation, imagine that for 5 different languages).
                              But I don't think that doing this specific translations would be very hard for Alpha.
                              Last edited by mmaisterrena; 09-29-2009, 09:45 AM.
                              Cheers
                              Mauricio

                              Comment

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