Custom Cultures in the .NET Framework 1.1 and Visual Studio 2003

The story for custom cultures in the .NET Framework 1.1 is considerably more limited than for the .NET Framework 2.0, to the extent that if you are able to upgrade to the .NET Framework 2.0, I advise doing so. Assuming that this isn't possible, read on.

A custom culture in the .NET Framework 1.1 is a new class that inherits from the CultureInfo class and sets the necessary CultureInfo properties to their relevant values in the constructor. The .NET Framework SDK includes an example of such a custom culture in <SDK>\v1.1\Samples\Technologies\Localization\CustomCulture. To use the new custom culture, you must construct it using its own constructor. If your custom culture class is called BengaliBangladeshCulture, for example, you construct it using this:

 CultureInfo cultureInfo = new BengaliBangladeshCulture(); 

It is not possible to construct it using the culture's name (e.g., "bn-BD") because the list of cultures supported by the .NET Framework 1.1 is hard-wired. Similarly, Visual Studio 2003 and WinRes 1.1 use the list supplied by the .NET Framework; therefore, it is not possible to make them aware of the custom culture, so both tools are useless for maintaining resources for the custom culture.