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That depends on who the application is being written for. If it is a project for a local government organisation, etc. then there is no point, if it is for a multi-national (or a client whose locale is different to mine) then yes, I try to code for localisation.
--Colin Mackay--
"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength but perseverance." (H. Jackson Brown)
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We localise our app into 9 languages, including Japanese, Chinese and Russian.
We weren't able to get it to work under Arabic, because we have to support all platforms (including Win98). I'm not charge of the localisation, so I don't know the technical details, but I understand it's extreemly difficult to localise an app to Arabic under Windows.
I'm curious has anyone successfully ported a C++ app to Arabic?
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The Windows 9x environments are notoriously difficult for handling bidirectional text. From what I understand, it's much easier under Windows 2000 and XP. You might consider localizing your app for the Middle East under those versions, and drop support for Windows 9x (at least as far as Arabic support goes).
Software Zen: delete this;
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Yeah, Hebrew and Arabic are difficult becuase of the right-to-left reading order. If you're careful it can be done though, you may manually have to flip some controls here and there to make it work out right. I personally have not had to do it (yet...) but some other groups in this company have, and while it's tricky, it's not impossible.
If your nose runs and your feet smell, then you're built upside down.
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I was developing something (actually it was more of a test and practice) that had to be localised using C# and Visual Studio .NET and there was no problem whatsoever to get it into Arabic. All I needed to do was to set Localizable property to True (Inside Visual Studio .NET) and choose the language for which to localize it. For Arabic you need RightToLeft set to true, and the VS.NET will generate the appropriate sattelite assemblies. Also with Visual Studio.NET you get a very nice tool (very nicely hidden) which is called WinRes.exe so you can send your resx files and winres.exe to the translation people and then integrate that with your project.
This project was done on Win2K and WinXP, but I think it should work on Win98 as well. Also, if you are interested I have little Culture Explorer utility that I wrote which demonstrates the capabilities of .NET Framework's internationalization. So feel free to email me on huseinr@epn.ba
Best regards,
Husein
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Hey, I've been looking into this for my project, Fluid UI Toolkit[^]. I'd greatly appreciate some advice on this. I'll send you my email address if you're able to help me here.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." - Jesus
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
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Yeah, sure I will help you. If you have any question please feel free to email me, or I could write something up based on my experience. Probably my very first CodeProject article. 
Husein
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Do you think localization is always a waste of time? I'll admit, it seems like we spend a lot of effort on it with my company's products. I'm not sure we ever receive an adequate return  . We do quite a bit of business in Europe and the Pacific Rim, but the bulk of the money is in terms of hardware which is locale-agnostic.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I understand. My question wasn't meant to be critical. I do contract work myself, and it's hard to break the habit of putting _T(); around every frikkin' string in the program  .
Software Zen: delete this;
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...on whether you mean the first time the code is written, or the third quick re-working of it, after it breaks for someone in China... 
Shog9 -- Exchanging a walk-on part in the War for the lead role in a Cage
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