foreign language support

[Clipper87]

Apparently there's still a lot of hardcoded text strings in A5v10 so foreign language support is only partial which makes it rather unusable here in Europe. My suggestion would be that Alpha makes all the hardcoded strings available in some file and then the developer community can take care of translating those strings. A5 would become 100% multilingual with little effort for Alpha I'd say. If you also are a developer needing foreign language support pls show me your support here so that it can get noticed by the Alpha people (hope so). It would for sure boost their sales outside the US as far as I'm concerned.

[aRob]

Re: foreign language support

Language support seems like a good idea, but maybe it's not easy to do. I don't have the beta but I saw the demo video. It looks like presently you can only change form labels and grid labels. To do language support, Alpha would need to do a language lookup for all existing and future error/warning messages. Reports would need to lookup the user's language code and possibly run different reports. And what about custom error and warning messages embedded in the tables and scripts? Alpha would need to create a method of handling multiple languages for that case.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: foreign language support

Does the branding utility fall short of what you need?

http://www.alphasoftware.com/shop/it...asp?PRODID=675

[RodMG]

Re: foreign language support

Hi, All.

I support the foreign language issue.

I really like Alpha Five, but I need much of the system message translated to Spanish. I'm refering to the automatic operative messages the final user gets while ussing the application.

I recently see an application in other language, but the developer pointed out that he had to develop almost all operative message on his own, thats a lot of work an that makes Alpha Five not sutable for me.

If Alpha Five includes non english spoken people in their perspectives, I would be glad to help in the Spanish translation.

Hope Alpha Five consider this as part of a Global business plan.

Regards,

Rod MG

[RodMG]

Re: foreign language support

Hi,

�Any comment about this from Alpha Five staff?

Regards,


Rod MG

[Keith Hubert]

Re: foreign language support

Hi Rod,

Yes you will need to type in the Spanish text for your users to work with, but that is no different than any one else having to type text in English.

There are many users I know of using Alpha in the Netherlands, France and Germany in their own languages.

Now if all the Functions had translations I could understand how that would make Alpha an easier product to work with.

[mmaisterrena]

Re: foreign language support

Rod (talvez Rodolfo?) in version 10 there are "grid templates" and this has speed up the process a hole lot, you will have to do the translation only 1 time for most cases. You can have your own collection of templates (one for editing, one for read only, etc).

Por cierto yo tambien desarrollo mis aplicaciones en espa�ol y no cambiaria alpha five por nada.

[RodMG]

Re: foreign language support

Keith,

Thanks a lot for your input, that is exactly what I want so I think it will be time for trying Alpha Five in deep.Thanks.


Mauricio.

Tu comentario me ha resultado de lo m�s revelador. Hace tiempo descargu� la versi�n de evaluaci�n de Alpha Five 9 y encontr� que, por ejemplo, al activar en un campo la regla que evita que el campo quede vavio, si bien la regla cumpl�a su funci�n no encontr� la forma de evitar que el mensaje de aviso al usuario apareciera en ingl�s ("The field could not be empty").

En aquel entonces la recomendaci�n que me hicieron fue que desarrollara mis funciones para que los mensajes destinados al usuario final aparecieran en espa�ol, sin embargo mi idea es utilizar todas las funciones autom�ticas que tiene Alpha Five incorporadas, Por ejemplo, he visto la posibilidad que tiene Alpha Five de exportar a PDF o a Excel un informe, sin embargo la ventana con la que esto es llevado a cabo tiene la interfase en Ingl�s (http://www.alphasoftware.com/AlphaFi...000Reports.asp). A este tipo de cosas me refiero, si fuera posible tener esta vnetana con los testos en espa�ol el trabajo ser�a menor.

Todo lo anterior lo he comentado sabiendo perfectamente que mi punto de vista puede venir de mi desconocimiento de Alpha Five, sin embargo quisiera aprovechar tu participaci�n para conocer cual ha sido tu experiencia respecto a esto.

De ya, muchas gracias por tu ayuda.

Saludos,

Rod.

PD Efectivamente, mi nombre es Rodolfo.

[mmaisterrena]

Re: foreign language support

Rodolfo,

Mi trabajo con alpha five ha sido en su mayoria en la parte web, por tus comentarios (y el foro donde estan) parece ser que tu inclinacion es por la parte de escritorio. En ese caso el desarrollo de tus propias funciones es el metodo mas conveniente.

un buen tip es el de crear un ActionScript o una operacion con los "genies" que trae alpha five incluidos y despues darle clic derecho y seleccionar la opcion de "view xbasic" copiarlo todo y crear una funcion (o algun boton en una forma) con ese codigo solamente traduciendo los mensajes de los dialogos al Espa�ol

Saludos

Sorry to all non-spanish speaking members

[Clipper87]

Re: foreign language support

Hi,

�Any comment about this from Alpha Five staff?

Regards,


Rod MG

Rod,

No word yet from Alpha Five staff... True foreign language support would mean a tremendous opportunity for them though so I guess maybe, just maybe they read this thread and will go for it...

[rleunis]

Re: foreign language support

Apparently there's still a lot of hardcoded text strings in A5v10 so foreign language support is only partial which makes it rather unusable here in Europe.

For labels in v10 most can be changed to your local language now. There are still a couple which you cannot translate, like the QBE feature in grids (I think). Maybe you and others could make a list you came across and give it to Selwyn so he can evaluate to make them changeable.

Also:
latest release:
18-Sept-2009 2461-3360 Last Update 1:01 PM

UTF-8 Support - UTF-8 Support has now been added internally for all SQL database access. This means that you can now, for example, use Chinese or Japanese characters in a Web application.

Then the only thing to wish for is better support for:

International date representations / input possibilities other than US methods ( DD-MM-YYYY) and comma vs decimal point (9.999.999,99). But maybe this has been tackled also in V10 (i did not check that, but do recall entries for earlier versions than V10 on this board).

regards, Ron

[rleunis]

Re: foreign language support

Sorry. I thought I was in the web forum of V10. My remarks refer to the web possibilities in V10...

[SwissCharles]

Re: foreign language support

...Now if all the Functions had translations I could understand how that would make Alpha an easier product to work with....

Having used A5 v5 back then and now starting again after a longish break, me too had pestered poor Richard then :D with my pleas to publish a German version of the product. A plea I still keep up! But: I would not go as far as Hubert suggests, by translating functions et al. Based on my bad experience with M$'s Excel I strongly suggest, that Alpha Software - if they indeed should consider consolidating language relevant resources and making them accessible to the developer - does limit these facilities to system-messages!

At one point in the past, M$ decided to also publish their plethora of Excel- and VBA- functions in German, which resulted IMHO in a very big mess of partly German, partly English code, which among other problems limited the exchange of knowledge between the two user groups.

IMO it can be expected of a developer that he/she is capable of understanding English. But on the other hand, end users in Germany, Switzerland and Austria (and anywhere else) should not be confronted with system- and error messages in English ( OK, they shouldn't be confronted with error messages at all :p ).

Just my 2 cts + vat...

[RodMG]

Re: foreign language support

Hi, All.

As SwissCharles commented, the xbasic language and exclusive developer interfaces should follow the English standar.

My point is that all final user interfaces should be in the final user preference language. I could develop my own forms en my prefered languages, buy if I really want to get the most power of Alpha Five and be productive I need that the user interface of the greate automatic functions Alpha Five includes be in other languages not just english.

It will be greate to here Richard position in this topic couse this could be important to go in the Alpha Five way (And I really want).

Regards,

Rod MG

[gregory]

Re: foreign language support

....IMO it can be expected of a developer that he/she is capable of understanding English. But on the other hand, end users in Germany, Switzerland and Austria (and anywhere else) should not be confronted with system- and error messages in English.

This is exactly my opinion. Using VFP since many years, I can confirm that their translated runtime versions do what the programmer wants/needs to offer to his customers. App specific stuff like labels, captions etc. can be easily and speedily (as well at design time and at runtime) be translated using a function call like
"w('the text to be translated')", which does a lookup in the proper language table, inserts the input text if it is not found and returns either the input text if there is no translation or the translation.

gregory
ESCOOP Switzerland

Gruezi Mr. Schneiter! Hals-und Beinbruch.