[GEM Development] Re: FreeGEM internationalization

[Ben A L Jemmett]

Quoting John Elliott <jce at seasip.demon.co.uk>:
> Blair Campbell wrote:
> : Has anyone thought of developing GEM with the kitten library used in
> : several FreeDOS programs?  It allows a program to read
> : internationalized strings based on the LANG environment variable
> : during program execution.
> 
>   The way I'd expect that to be done in GEM is for programs to load a
> different .RSC file depending on the LANG setting.

It might be nice, in some ways, if that could be done transparently from the
app's point of view -- when the app does a rsrc_load("MYAPP.RSC") the AES can
check if a (for instance) C:\GEMAPPS\LOCALES\EN_GB\MYAPP.RSC file exists, and
load it in place of .\MYAPP.RSC.  If the file doesn't exist (or couldn't be
loaded?), fall back to normal behaviour.

Pros: 
* tidier than having each app look for a locale-specific file directly
(consistent file organisation etc.);
* allows legacy apps to be localised without requiring code changes (in theory).

Cons:
* would probably need an opt-out (perhaps an AES setting to turn it off
entirely, and a flag for new apps to use if they need to);
* might bloat the AES unreasonably;
* my suggestions usually have obvious fatal flaws that I failed to spot!

Anyway, that's my brain dump for the evening, now to divest myself of my current
good mood by pootling round the M25 for a bit.  Yay.

-- 
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)

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