Considerations for Multilingual Applications

   

---

Developing localizable applications can have a big payoff in a multilingual environment. The MUI provides public APIs that can be used to develop fully localizable applications. Your applications can support multiple languages and complex scripts when you take these steps to leverage the power of the multilingual support contained in the MUI and the operating system:

• Make your application Unicode.

  One of the key considerations when developing multinational applications is to utilize Unicode. Unicode is an international standard capable of representing most of the languages in use in the world today. Applications coded to Unicode can easily display user interface elements in any language. This frees you from reliance on code pages for language support. To be localizable, an application must be Unicode enabled.

• Create a resource DLL for each supported language.

  MUI-enabled applications use separate resource DLLs to store user interface strings for different languages. This method might require additional effort at the outset, but it provides significant advantages in the long run. Not only does this method of coding allow user interface switching, but it's easy to update applications with new languages without making changes to the core binary or other resource DLLs. This makes your application completely localizable.

---

Top