Factory Track allows system administrators and individual users to select the language for the user interface. Language selection affects text in forms, messages, and help.
A language name is paired with a region or country name to form a culture name. For example:
| Language - Country | Culture |
|---|---|
| English - United States | en-US |
| Spanish - Argentina | es-AR |
| Japanese - Japan | ja-JP |
In Factory Track, culture names are used as names of subfolders under the working directory's folder. Each subfolder contains language-specific resources (which include the toolset's menus, dialogs, and strings, translated into the designated language) and may contain Help files translated into that language.
When the application starts, the toolset determines the current user-default settings, along with the settings in the Language IDs form, to display the user interface, Help, and messages in the language based on the settings.
If the language-specific resources are not available for your user-default settings, the user interface and/or Help displays in the application's base language (US English).
The Language IDs form defines the language-related IDs used in the application and links the IDs to resources. It specifies the strings table, language, and Help subdirectories assigned to each language ID, as well as the application message language used with the language ID and the typographic font in which reports print when the language ID is in effect. In addition, the form defines the date format and numeric format to use in report output when the language ID is in effect. Language ID names correspond to .NET culture names.
The application's forms database includes a set of "strings" tables, which contain translations of the text strings used in form titles, field labels, buttons, and so on. The default strings table, for US English, is named Strings. Other strings tables have names like JapaneseStrings, FrenchStrings, and so on.
The strings table used for each language ID is determined by the settings in the application's Language IDs form. In the Sites form, the Forms Database Name should point to the forms database that contains the strings tables you want a specific site to use.
Application message strings are maintained in the ApplicationMessages table. The table includes default text strings in U.S. English and any translations of message strings.
The language used for messages in an application is determined by the Message Language setting in the Language IDs form.
Individual users can override the default language for an application in the Settings dialog box (on the View menu, select Settings.) In the Language box, you can select from a list of language IDs (which are defined in the Language IDs form). For example, a user-default language may be set to French (France)[fr-FR] because the user who usually sits at the computer speaks French. However, another user who speaks only English can override the language setting and view the user interface and Help in English by selecting, for example, English (United Kingdom)[en-GB].
The language override information is saved and remains in effect the next time you log on to the application -- and until you reset the override. To reset the language to the user-default culture, select <User Default Language Setting> in Language in the Settings dialog box.
The system administrator can modify the language assignments to create a mixed-language user interface. See the Language IDs form.