Multilanguage with C#

The .NET-Frameworks offers a good support for application which needs to be localizable. For each of my C#-projects i create three ressources under the properties-folder.

For this example we use a simple message text in Messages.resx. The name of the localizable message text is MsgSampleText.

In the code this text can easily accessed:

   1: string messageText = Messages.MsgSampleText;

   2: MessageBox.Show(messageText);

To organanize resources for additional languages a new folder Additional Resources is used. In this Folder i create the resources files for other languages (in this sample we use en-GB- and de-DE-language support). In the filename i encode the purpose. So we have now

Both of these resources should not be an embedded resource. So this must be changed to None

For each resource a so-called satellite assembly must be build. For that two steps we need:

• compile the resource with ResGen.exe
• link this resourse in the satellite assembly with AL.exe

For efficiency this is done by a post-build which calls a batch named CreateSatelliteAssemblies.bat under the folder Additional Resources.

   1: ECHO PARAMETER1=%1

   2: ECHO PARAMETER2=%2

   3:

   4: REM en-GB

   5: CD %2

   6: IF NOT EXIST en-GB mkdir en-GB

   7: CD en-GB

   8:

   9: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\RESGEN.EXE" %1\Messages.en-GB.resx

  10: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL.EXE" /t:lib /embed:%1\Messages.en-GB.resources,EsriDe.Samples.Localization.Properties.Messages.en-GB.resources /culture:en-GB /out:EsriDe.Samples.Localization.resources.dll

  11:

  12: REM de-DE

  13: CD %2

  14: IF NOT EXIST de-DE mkdir de-DE

  15: CD de-DE

  16:

  17: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\RESGEN.EXE" %1\Messages.de-DE.resx

  18: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\AL.EXE" /t:lib /embed:%1\Messages.de-DE.resources,EsriDe.Samples.Localization.Properties.Messages.de-DE.resources /culture:de-DE /out:EsriDe.Samples.Localization.resources.dll

And the post build for calling the batch and injecting the parameters %1 and %2 is:

   1: "$(ProjectDir)Additional Resources\CreateSatelliteAssemblies.bat" "$(ProjectDir)Additional Resources" "$(TargetDir)"

After compiling the application there should the following folder-structure which contains the satellite assemblies

Henceforth the ressource-manager use the satellite assembly which fits to the language environment. And if no know language environement is used the default language included in the main assembly is used.

Screenshots