Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Hello and welcome to today’s chat on “Developing Internationalized software using .NET Framework”

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
We have with us here 4 experts to answer your questions on the topic today...

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Anutthara Bhardwaj - SDE/T working in MSFT for 2 years. Testing Visual Studio Team System, mostly the Team Build component being built out of IDC Hyderabad.

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Kranthi K – SDET, Mobile Devices Group

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Prakash Paramasivam - Test Lead for WinFS working at Microsoft for over an year and involved in testing various WinFS features.

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Alok Goyal - works for IDC Mobility group in SQL Mobile Team as a SDET.

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
4 experts - all yours for an hour. Start shooting your questions!

(Please remember to check ‘Ask Expert’ checkbox in your chat window)

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Can we get an understanding of internationalized software imply?
A: Internationalized software simply means software that works on different language platforms as well as can s/w that can be presented in different languages

Prakash[MS] (Expert):
Lets first discuss about Globalization concepts first ..While the questions are always welcome

Prakash[MS] (Expert):
Globalization is a process of developing apps that supports localized user, regional support for data in multiple cultures.

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Let me explain what does mean the term localization mean

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Localization is the process of translating an application's resources into localized versions for each culture that the application will support. It composed of two blocks: UI Block and Code Block

Localized Version =Localized UI Block + Code

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: How can I get all Cultures supported on a system through .NET
A: You can simply do foreach (CultureInfo ci in CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.AllCultures))

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: Can you explain a bit more on Internationalization?
A: Internationalization has two parts - World-Readiness and Localization. World-Readiness again has two parts - Globalization and Localizability. Please read info provided by Alok and Prakash regarding globalization and localization

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: What is the benchmark you take while developing internalized software?
A: : If you are asking for what are the stuff we look at for developing internationalized software, then we look at:

1. Product must work on platforms of different languages and be able to take input from several languages - this is globalization.

 2. if the product is localized, the UI language/elements will be in different languages and will be able to take input and give output in many languages

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: just to add Alok Can we set culture values in the globalization section of the web.config file?
A: You can set culture as well as UICulture values in the globalization section of your web.config file.

 Here is a sample: <globalization

       culture="en-US"

       uiCulture="de-DE"

    />

Prakash[MS] (Expert):
Q: If I have to go and start making my app global ready, what is the starting point? Can you provide me a good link which I can read?
A: This is the link you can start off with http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/getWR/default.mspx

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: We have faced issues when we persist data in SQL server in a particular date/time format and retrieving and displaying it in different culture. It displays error messages provided the date format is not compatible with what is retrieved.
A: This is probably due to saving in a different culture and retrieving in a different culture. Using the Convert function you can display dates in diff formats and of course convert between them too. Here is a helpful link: http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/2197931

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: Windows keeps on adding new cultures with every release then how it is handled through .NET
A: Basically through .NET we can get to know windows supported culture only by doing the following                                                                                                                          

foreach (CultureInfo culture in CultureInfo.GetCultures(

        CultureTypes.WindowsOnlyCultures))

{

Console.WriteLine (ci.Name);

}

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: How do we overcome the issue of persisting date in a particular format and showing in the relevant culture of the client application?
A: A best practice is to save all dates in the UTC format. While retrieving data, you can retrieve data as UTC and display according to the current culture on the machine you are displaying. Here is a link describing how to format dates on different cultures http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconformattingobjectsforspecificculture.asp

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: What is the difference between culture and UICulture?
A: UICulture is just specific to the UI. That is if UICulture is set to Chinese, you will see all UI in Chinese language if you have resources for it. Culture applies to date/time formats, sort mechanisms etc

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: What is the best way to represent a locale?
A: In the Windows operating systems, a locale is a set of user preference information related to the user's language, environment and/or cultural conventions. This information is represented as a list of values used to determine the correct input language, keyboard layout, sorting order, and the formats used for numbers, dates, currencies and time. In order for a particular locale to be available for selection, the appropriate language group < http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/DrIntl/faqs/Locales.mspx  > must be installed.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP include support for 126 and 136 different locales, respectively, ensuring that users around the world can configure their systems to use the correct formats for their own language and region.

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Can't we use .resx file for the purpose, by which means we can localize our site?
A: Web sites localization has been immensely simplified with VS 2005. Some cool features that would help are managed resource editor, localizing static content automatically etc. I would suggest using satellite dlls to store localized resources of your site. Here is a link that describes localization for web sites - http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/ASP2local.asp

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q:  For Retrieving user locale in win32 – which API is to be used?
A: Retrieving user locale - GetUserDefaultLCID ()

Prakash[MS] (Expert):
Q: how do you localize using windows mobile 2005?
A: In general for localizing any .NET apps, the steps are

·          Add Localized Resources

·          Set the CurrentCulture to Local Culture

·          Use ResourceManager to read resources

·          Use CultureInfo Class for culture-specific information

 

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: What are Win32 API’s for handling inputs.
A: WIN32 API’s for handling inputs

GetKeyboardLayout

GetKeyboardLayoutList

GetKeyboardLayoutName

LoadKeyboardLayout

UnloadKeyboardLayout

ActivateKeyboardLayout

But please keep discussion relevant to .NETFX only :)

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: I know what is a locale and what is a language. But when comes to coding, I want to represent them using one best way. The ways I can think of Locale ID (LCID), TwoLetterISOStandardLanugageName ... etc... However which one is the preferred one?
A: Preferred way is to use twoletterlanguagename like fr-FR.

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: We have serialized control properties in a particular culture and deserialized using a different culture. This hasn't worked since the format changes for properties like size and width and we end up with an error. Is there a way we can overcome this.
A: May be you can try using invariant culture to achieve it,

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: I’m very much interested in localization. is there a code page for Telugu/Tamil/Hindi?
A: Code pages for Indic languages are available from Windows 2003 and not before that. Telugu - 57005, Tamil - 57004 and Hindi - 57002

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: How exactly my control panel regional settings map to CultureInfo.CurrentCulture and CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture?
A: CurrentCulture is the culture that you can choose in the dropdown in the "regional options" tab. CurrentUICulture has no direct equivalent in the R&LSO AFAIK


Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Ok , I have tried with localizing my web site with resx files and setting current culture but it didn’t worked, can u figure out why ?
A: I will need a bit more detail like what exactly you did to generate the resx file and where the current culture was set and what was the bug you encountered. I'll possibly need to take a peek at your web.config also.

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: In what circumstances one should use Ordinal, Invariant and Current Cultures
A: To decide which you should use in a given situation, it is important to look at what you are trying to accomplish. Would you want two strings that are equivalent according to the Unicode normalization rules to be treated as equal, like you might in a sorted list of names? This is probably a good time to use the current culture. Are you trying to list items in the same order, no matter how the user's preferences are configured? Using Invariant here is probably the best plan. Or should any difference in the underlying strings be cause for treating the strings as different, whether the difference is visible or not (like in a password)? Ordinal comparisons are probably the best plan here.

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: What is easiest method to localize web site ?
A: The easiest way to localize a Web page is usually to create a copy and translate it to the target language. This works well for static content that does not require a lot of maintenance. To support this model for ASP.NET pages, you can set the Culture attribute using the Page directive. All locale-dependent methods pick up the value of the Culture attribute. But the problem with this is that this model is not scalable. With the advent of new loc features in asp.net 2.0, localizing using satellite dlls is also very easy as well as scalable. Refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/ASP2local.asp

 

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: What exactly meant by Surrogate Characters? And which character encoding these surrogate characters belong to?
A: Surrogate character basically consists of two sequences of 16 bit code units. High 16 bit code unit is called high surrogate and low 16 bit code unit is called low surrogate. Surrogate characters are basically used in complex scripts and please elaborate what do u mean by character encoding. What I know is  UCS and Unicode supports Surrogate characters

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: Oops...I see that Surrogate Characters are problematic and they are meant to overcome.  Alok, do you mean to say that Unicode standard overcomes surrogate character problem? Or Unicode standard also has surrogate character problem?  I am confused pl explain
A: Basically Unicode and UCS standard overcomes surrogated character problem. After BMP Plane in character set tables there are code point which are allocated to surrogate characters, so I must say that in Unicode you do not need to worry and if you use StringInfo or TextInfo class, it will not be a problem

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q:  What is Unicode Normalization and what are the methods supported by .NETFX
A: The Unicode Consortium defines normalization as a method whereby "equivalent text will have identical binary representations. When implementations keep strings in a normalized form, they can be assured that equivalent strings have a unique binary representation." The Unicode version of normalization is described in Unicode Standard Annex (UAX) #15. The .NET Framework adds two methods to the String class with two overrides each, and one enumeration giving the different forms:

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: how to make phonetic presentation?
A: Jaideep - I wonder if you could elaborate that. Phonetic presentation is a way of spelling which matches letters to the sounds of words - but what exactly do you wish to use the .NET fx for?

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: how to make phonetic presentation?
A: Look at this presentation for more info on phonetics http://depts.washington.edu/lingweb/ling200/lect3_phonetics1.ppt

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: What exactly meant by Surrogate Characters? And which character encoding these surrogate characters belong to?  And, how .NET FX coding is affected by these surrogate characters presence in the string I give to the .NET FX API? (IGNORE my previous question)
A: I have given the answer of your previous question and to add more in .NETFX has support of surrogate characters through StringInfo and TextInfo classes. Also please find a code snippet and you may get more clarity
sing System;

using System.Globalization;

public class SamplesTextElementEnumerator

{

    public static void Main()

    {

        // Creates and initializes a String containing the following:

        //   - a surrogate pair (high surrogate U+D800 and low surrogate U+DC00)

        //   - a combining character sequence (the Latin small letter "a" followed by the combining grave accent)

        //   - a base character (the ligature "")

   
       String myString = "\uD800\uDC00\u0061\u0300\u00C6";

TextElementEnumerator myTEE = StringInfo.GetTextElementEnumerator(myString);

 myTEE.Reset();

 while (myTEE.MoveNext())

        {

            Console.WriteLine("[{0}]:\t{1}\t{2}", myTEE.ElementIndex, myTEE.Current, myTEE.GetTextElement());

        }

       



Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: right, but I want to change my locale dynamically without adding many pages to my site.
A: Yep - I get you. You will find these samples helpful http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/util/srcview.aspx?path=/quickstart/aspplus/samples/localize/i18n/i18n_regional.src  - Sample to switch regional settings

http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/util/srcview.aspx?path=/quickstart/aspplus/samples/localize/localize2/news-en-us.src  - Sample to show localized content in server controls

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: what are the two methods in the String Class
A: There are many methods in the String class. Which methods are you enquiring about?

 Here is a list of all members http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemStringMethodsTopic.asp

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: Can you please explain what is Turkish Eye problem? Also in the same line, are there any other well known problems with other locales?
A: in Turkish when you try to lowercase the capital Letter I then in English Language it comes as ‘i’. Please look at the dot on top of small ‘i’. But in Turkish there won't be any dot and it will be bare a vertical stroke. In Swedish locale accented a comes after 'a' but in English it comes after 'z'

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: Where can I find more about Unicode and how .NET supports Unicode
A: You can find complete info about Unicode at www.unicode.org   .NET has Unicode class in System.Text names which provides methods to encode and decode all UTF data

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Moderator: Can I ask WIN32 questions related to Internationalization?
A: All of us have areas of expertise within .NET, so we would be better equipped to answer those related to .NET, but we can try to answer your win32 questions or get back with the appropriate info :)

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Q: !! Quick break friends!! ... Microsoft will be doing a mega launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 with Bill Gates coming down next week! Make sure you don't miss out on the action! Hit here - www.rockthelaunch.in or www.billgateslive.com (webcast). Are you ready to rock the launch?

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: Where can I find more about Unicode and how .NET supports Unicode
A: www.unicode.org  for Unicode information and you refer System.Text namespace in .NET

Prakash[MS] (Expert):
Q: does internationalization encompass localization and globalization ? How are both accomplished
A: Yes, Internationalization encompass globalization and localization. In Internationalization, Globalization is the fist step in the process, localizability is the next step and Localization is the last step in the process.

Alok[MS] (Expert):

Q: Where is the location of BOM and how can we determine the encoding type?
A: there is a Byte Order Mark(BOM) associated with a file which is encoded in UTF-16, UTF-8 or UTF-32. Basically the location of BOM is in the file header. This BOM is fixed for each type of encoding (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF32). So if you read this BOM you can come to know about the encoding.

Alok[MS] (Expert):

Q: Do you know if .NET supports UTF-32 encoding?
A: May be it supports , Look at System.Text namespace. Please check Encoding Class and look at various properties. For example Encoding.UTF8, Encoding.UTF16 so probably UTF32 is also there .

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Alok people with cleft palette understand phonetics. There are medical applications that have representation for these characters, I am not sure what those are, but are there representation for such a thing. net fx?
A: Jaideep - AFAIK, we do not have explicit support for these on .NET, but I will get back to you on this topic to confirm with more data.

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
for those who came in late - we're discussing "Developing Internationalized software using .NET Framework” - please shoot your questions after checking the 'Ask The Expert' checkbox!

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: How can I store my words in SQL Server in different languages and retrieve them as well ?
A: SQL Server is Unicode based. As long as your client also supports Unicode, storing any language and retrieving it will not create any problem.

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: Alok, ByteOrderMask (BOM) is stored in file header for files.  But where it gets stored for the Unicode string I am receiving from my caller?
A: In Windows XP it is by default it is UTF-16 but when r u receiving it on the network then byte order mark can be useful on the destination machine to know the encoding,  

Prakash[MS] (Expert):
Q: Is .NET CF 2.0 supports the same level of internationalization as that of .NET FX 2.0?  Especially the devices these days are getting localized!
A: Yes, it supports the same level of internationalization for devices

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
Mademoiselles et hommes (in true internationalized fashion) - we have 2 more mins. for the chat to end. Would you like some more time (if the experts may permit!)

KranthiK[MS] (Expert):
Q: When a file is encoded in Unicode standard let’s say UTF16 and then sent over the network to a different machine then how target machine determines the source file encoding and what issues may arise.
A: Every file will contain Byte Order Mark (BOM) using which we can identify the encoding scheme

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
great! we have 10 more minutes with the kind consent of the experts :)

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
no more new questions please - we

Kaushal_MS (Moderator):
... we will answer the pending questions

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Is there any .NET FX API that takes any format string and always gives out the string in a particular (say UTF-32) string format.  This way, I probably can use that API to convert the incoming string to UTF-32 always!
A: Yes - you can use Convert API - here is a link that explains more on this http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemTextEncodingClassConvertTopic.asp   

Alok[MS] (Expert):
Q: Alok true for the network packets, but I am API provider and takes String object in my API.  I just want to find the incoming string format type and react upon accordingly?
A: If you do the following you may find the answer byte[] encodedcharacters = Encoding.GetBytes(IncomingString) , if you can calculate the number of bytes you may come to know if it is UTF-16 or UTF-32. Basically you need to calculate the number of bytes used and then find out

Anu [MS] (Expert):
Q: Hi can you tell me the difference between localization and localizability?
A: You can read more about it at  http://blogs.msdn.com/anutthara/archive/2005/11/25/496923.aspx

 Designing a software's code and resources such that they can be localized and presented in other languages thus making it usable in other languages is called localizability. This means, I need to design my product in a way that if tomorrow I want an international developer to use it, the software must be easily lendable to localization. Localization is the actual process of localizing the resources used in the software, thus making the product ready in a new language