If we want to display a dialog like this:
with all strings localised into different languages, we currently need to write something like the following in the Opening Event Handler:
Self.Title = Localise("menu.fileMenu.settingsItem", Locale.FromIdentifier(App.CurrentLocale))
Self.LocaleLabel.Text = Localise("prefs.CurrentLocale", Locale.FromIdentifier(App.CurrentLocale))
Self.OpenLastDatabaseCheckBox.Text = Localise("prefs.AutoLoadDatabase", Locale.FromIdentifier(App.CurrentLocale))
Self.CancelButton.Text = Localise("msg.Cancel", Locale.FromIdentifier(App.CurrentLocale))
Self.SaveButton.Text = Localise("msg.Save", Locale.FromIdentifier(App.CurrentLocale))
I would propose adding a new read/write Application.CurrentLocale property to the Application class, together with some mechanism for automatically localising the text displayed by windows and UI controls.
One option would be to add an Auto Localise property to the Window class, or perhaps to individual UI objects where localisation is applicable.
However, I think an even simpler and more flexible approach would be something similar to the way 4D handles localisation.
In 4D, any property that displays text—such as a window title, button title, label, etc.—can contain a reference to a localisation resource using a special prefix. For example:
:xliff:object_key_in_xliff_file
as shown in this image:
A similar prefix-based approach would work perfectly well here and would avoid introducing additional properties for windows and other UI objects.
The rule could be very simple: if a text value begins with the localisation prefix, resolve the corresponding key and display the localised string using Application.CurrentLocale. Otherwise, display the text exactly as entered.
For example, instead of writing localisation code in the Opening Event Handler, we could simply set a button's text to something like:
:localise:msg.Save
and have the framework resolve it automatically at runtime.
Of course, we can always ask AI to generate the localisation code for every window in our application—but imagine how many tokens and how much electricity we could save if this feature were built in. B)