Silverlight and International Thoughts

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11/16/2008

LocWebService: Only download resources per UserControl

Introduction
UserControl local resources configuration
WCF Service
Code

1. Introduction

In this sample I will show how bind text elements that load localization resources from the server side resx file via a WCF service in silverlight 2.0.

Advantages:

Only download resources per usercontrol
Remove the need for custom resx code generators locally
Local binding in design mode to english or your source language

Disadvantages:

UserControl are slower to load (wait for WCF response before displaying)

2. UserControl local resources configuration

I first created two helper class's to assist in design time binding called LocItem and LocCollection

LocItem implements the INotifyPropertyChanged class and contains two properties ItemName and ItemValue. This will enable us to dynamically update a localizable string at runtime. We then need to a LocItem for every localizable string we add it to our UserControl Resources per control or page.

LocCollection is another helper class based from Silverlight Control Toolkit ObjectCollection This is a enumerable collection of our loc strings on a page, that get over the limitation that ResourceDictionary does not implement iEnumerable.

Both these are instantiated in markup and then bound to your localizable element.

<UserControl.Resources>
<Loc:LocItem ItemName="tb1" ItemValue="tb1" x:Key="LocItem1" />

<Loc:LocCollection x:Key="LStrings" >
<sys:String>tb1</sys:String>
</Loc:LocCollection>

</UserControl.Resources>

...
<TextBlock x:Name="tb1" Text="{Binding ItemValue}" DataContext="{StaticResource LocItem1}" />

3. WCF Service

When the control initializes we make a WCF request to get all translations in our LocCollection. On the server side we lookup our server side resx file for each requested string and wrap it in a XDocument of LocString . Once the WCF loaded event fires we then update the ItemValue our individual LocItems to display the localizable strings.

4. Code

This is a pretty crude sample but you could wrap this functionality in asp.net style base page to make it scale cleaner.

Download: LocWebService.zip

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10/26/2008

SL 2.0 localization on-demand sample updated

Overview

Updated To fix bugs on english code to check for culture installed and to fallback to english if culture not available

This is a more advanced sample showing concepts I showed beta 2 samples and integrated into Silverlight 2.0 RTW project. Im not going over each part as this has already been detailed in earlier posts.

Localization placeholder substitution
Exposing localizable properties in custom control
On-demand xap download

Requirements

Visual Studio professional or greater plus the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the excellent Dmytro Kryvko’s Extended Strongly Typed Resource Generator 2.3 at http://dmytro.kryvko.googlepages.com/ installer is at http://dmytro.kryvko.googlepages.com/ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx23.zip

Code: http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/LocOndemand.zip

10/17/2008

Creating a localizable Silverlight 2.0 RTW Application

About

The sample below shows how you can bind language resources (resx) using only markup. The final version of Silverlight makes localization alot cleaner.

Requirements

Instructions

1. Open Visual Studio
2. Click File \ New Project...
3. Select Visual C# \ Silverlight \ Silverlight Application
4. In the name field type SL2_RTM_Loc
5. Click ok and ok
6. In the Project Explorer
7. Right click on the SL2_RTM_Loc (c# Icon) Project
8. Click Add \ New Folder
9. Name it Resources
10. Right click on Resources folder and click add New Item...
11. Select Resources File
12. Name it Strings.resx and click ok
13. Close Strings.resx in VS
14. Select Strings.resx in VS and its file properties replace it Custom Tool field from ResXFileCodeGenerator to ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx
15. Right click on the strings.resx file and Select Run Custom Tool
16. Open strings.resx in VS
17. In the Name Field type tb1 and value “tb1 in english”
18. Repeat with Name Field type tb2 and value “tb2 in english”
19. Click Save, press F5 and add debugging to web.config
20. IE opens up with a blank page
21. Close IE
22. Open Page.xaml in xaml editor window
23. In the user control add a new xml namespace xmlns:Loc="clr-namespace:SL2_RTM_Loc.Resources"
24. Add a locstrings as a resource to your page eg: <UserControl.Resources><Loc:Strings x:Name="LocStrings" /></UserControl.Resources>
25. Inside the grid add a Textblock and bind it to your resource Tb1 eg: <TextBlock Text="{Binding tb1, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" />
26. The String should appear in the Design view above
27. Wrap the textblock inside a vertical stackpanel and add a second Textkblock

<StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding tb1, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" />
<TextBlock Text="{Binding tb2, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" />
</StackPanel>

28. In Project Explorer right click on Strings.resx and copy and paste it into the resources folder
29. Rename “Copy of Strings.resx” to “Strings.de.resx” (DE is the two letter language code for German)
30. Select Strings.de.resx in VS and its file properties remove it Custom Tool field from value ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx and change its Copy to Output Directory field to Copy if newer
31. Open Strings.de.resx Edit the value to “tb1 auf deutsch” and “tb2 auf deutsch”
32. Click Save, press F5
33. Repeat the last three steps to add fr
34. Notice the file %HOMEPATH%\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\SL2_RTM_Loc\SL2_RTM_Loc\bin\Debug\de\ appears but is not embedded in your xap yet
35. To add that culture to your xap you must open the %HOMEPATH%\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\SL2_RTM_Loc\SL2_RTM_Loc\ SL2_RTM_Loc.csproj in notepad
36. Update SupportedCultures to <SupportedCultures>de,fr</SupportedCultures>
37. Save and close
38. VS 2008 will ask you to reload project, click reload
39. Next we need to update the SL browser object reference
40. Delete the SL2_RTM_LocTestPage.aspx and set SL2_RTM_LocTestPage.html as your start page inside SL2_RTM_Loc.Web project
41. In SL2_RTM_LocTestPage.html Add the culture and uiculture params to your silverlight object

42. Click Save, press F5
43. IE should open up with the German strings

Code: http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/SL2%7C_RTM%7C_Loc.zip

Further Reading

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189057(VS.95).aspx

9/7/2008

Silverlight Localization Methods: User Controls Vs. Application

In this article I'm going to review usercontrol and two types of localization methods around them

User Controls Overview
Localization per user controls
Localization on application only
Conclusion

1. User Control Overview

"UserControls are the basic unit of reusable Xaml and the code that goes with it." User Controls are sometimes called custom controls. Most Silverlight applications will use and create many usercontrols in an application to simplify the application design in a more object orientated structure. A usercontrol can be used for UI elements (eg: dropdownlist, styled buttons, image viewer etc..) or computational (eg: prime number control etc...) or data retrieval (eg: load xml etc...).

Once you have created something worth re-using, you can instantiated directly in XAML as a custom type user control. eg: <CoolButtonUCNamespace:coolButton x:Name="button1" ButtonText="Click Here" />.

Some samples of user controls but note most controls wont have many UI strings to localize eg:

DropDown list would contain 0 UI loc strings (DB Data is content not UI localisation)
Image viewer would contain 2 loc string (Previous Image and Next image)
RTE (Rich Text Editor) would contain ~40 loc strings (Bold, Italic, Insert Image etc..)

2. Localization per custom controls

On the Silverlight forums people occasionally ask how to do localization on a per control basis? eg: coolButton.xaml with coolButtonResource.de.resx where each control has its own set of resource files. This will mean you need to manage, localize & build many seperate files.

To me this method gives some advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

Clean code separation between app and control
No dependencies external to the control

Disadvantages:

Cultures & Localization strings are control dependant
May lead to translation in-consistency
Control culture resources could grow very large (unless ondemand cultures are used)
Longer build times

Unless your a usercontrol vendor, this method would not be my first choice.

3. Localization on application only

The excellent Jordan Hammond created a novel way and wrote sample application by registering custom dependency properties and having all controls in generic.xaml.

But if you to have seperate controls, downloadable on demand, but I'll try to explain the logic and basics.

First review the good example of creating a reusable user control http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/theonewith/archive/2008/08/06/custom-silverlight-controls-creating-a-reusable-messagebox-dialog-part-i.aspx

Note a custom type user control can register custom dependency properties where you can set all localisable resources in its declaration and bind xaml at runtime

eg: <CoolButtonUCNamespace:coolButton x:Name="button1" ButtonText="Click Here" /> as <CoolButtonUCNamespace:coolButton x:Name="button1" ButtonText="{Binding LocButtonText, Source={StaticResource LocStrings}}" /> using the resx xaml binding as shown in the previous article.

Using this method you can expose all UI string properties in each of your user controls. This allows you to override the default strings and use a single application resx file per application rather than a rex per control.

Advantages:

Simpler loc build setup
Better content separation
Remove dependence on control not supporting application culture set
Translator has full control of all localization strings

Disadvantages:

More work required in user control creation
More verbose xaml

4. Conclusion

Thanks Jordan to pointing me to this method. I believe the localization per application is better due to the cleaner content and code separation which makes life far easier for the translator. Please share your thoughts below.

7/12/2008

Silverlight : on demand culture downloader

In this article, im going to explain how to create a localized silverlight application that only downloads the culture resources as required and in the process breifly i'll explain

1. On Demand Assembly deployment and the onDemandLoc class

2. ObservableCollection & INotifyCollectionChanged

3. Build xaps in batch file

4. Source Code

1. On Demand Assembly deployment and the onDemandLoc class

On Demand Assembly deployment is useful to increase startup performance of a RIA sites and allows the developer to only load the parts of application a user need in an "on demand" basis. This is of course especially useful when we need to use our culture resource files as well. Imagine 1000 words to download for 20 languages, when all you require in application in one culture. It is a waste of bandwidth and the user patience.

Below is a small class that allows you to download a class based on the current culture in use.

It use the webclient to download a xap of the cultures name it extract the culture dll of your namespace and then loads the assemably into memory.

public class onDemandLoc

{

private static ICollection<string> LoadedLang;

private string CurrentLCID;

static onDemandLoc() {

LoadedLang = App.getlang();

}

internal void LoadLocDll()

{

CurrentLCID = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName;

System.Net.WebClient wc = new System.Net.WebClient();

wc.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(OpenXAP);

wc.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(CurrentLCID + ".xap", UriKind.Relative));

}

internal void OpenXAP(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e)

{

if ((e.Error == null) && (e.Cancelled == false))

{

Assembly a = LoadAssemblyFromXap(App.Current.GetType().Namespace + "." + CurrentLCID + ".resources.dll", e.Result);

LoadedLang.Add(CurrentLCID);

}

internal Assembly LoadAssemblyFromXap(string relativeUriString, Stream xapPackageStream)

{

Uri uri = new Uri(relativeUriString, UriKind.Relative);

StreamResourceInfo xapPackageSri = new StreamResourceInfo(xapPackageStream, null);

StreamResourceInfo assemblySri = Application.GetResourceStream(xapPackageSri, uri);

AssemblyPart assemblyPart = new AssemblyPart();

Assembly a = assemblyPart.Load(assemblySri.Stream);

return a;

}

2. ObservableCollection & INotifyCollectionChanged

Once the assembly is loaded into memory it can be used, but i also add the culture to our list of loaded cultures to avoid re-downloading the same culture twice. I used an ObservableCollection<T> class and used the INotifyCollectionChanged event to trigger the event that the culture is downloaded and ready for use and thus we can safely refresh our page content using the new culture strings. Im not sure this is the best method, but i wanted to make it as re-useable as possible. I would love to hear suggestions of how others do it.

private static ObservableCollection<string> LoadedLang;

public App()

{

this.Startup += this.Application_Startup;

this.Exit += this.Application_Exit;

this.UnhandledException += this.Application_UnhandledException;

InitializeComponent();

LoadedLang = GetNewCollection();

INotifyCollectionChanged collection = LoadedLang as INotifyCollectionChanged;

collection.CollectionChanged += new NotifyCollectionChangedEventHandler(LocCollectionChangedEvt);

}

void LocCollectionChangedEvt(object sender, NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)

{

Page page1 = new Page();

((Page)this.RootVisual).LayoutRoot.Children.Clear();

((Page)this.RootVisual).LayoutRoot.Children.Add(page1);

}

public static ObservableCollection<string> GetNewCollection()

{

return new ObservableCollection<string>();

}

public static ICollection<string> getlang()

{

return LoadedLang;

}

3. Build xaps in batch file

Lastly we need to build out language xaps using the Visual Studio post build event and a small batch file so the user can download, remember if the user culture does not exist it fall back to english. I use some helper vbs file to help create and to zip files. Some people said in the past they had issues with the vbs zip functions i updated them a little and hopefully they are more intl friendly

for %%i in (da de fr ja nl) do (
if exist "$(TargetDir)%%i\%%i.zip" del "$(TargetDir)%%i\%%i.zip"
cscript /nologo "$(SolutionDir)$(ProjectName)\createzip.vbs" "$(TargetDir)%%i\%%i.zip"
echo ^<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" ^>^<Deployment.Parts^>^<AssemblyPart Source="$(ProjectName).%%i.resources.dll" /^>^</Deployment.Parts^>^</Deployment^> > "$(TargetDir)%%i\appmanifest.xaml"
cscript /nologo "$(SolutionDir)$(ProjectName)\addfiletozip.vbs" "$(TargetDir)%%i\%%i.zip" "$(TargetDir)%%i\appmanifest.xaml"
if exist "$(TargetDir)%%i\$(ProjectName).%%i.resources.dll" del "$(TargetDir)%%i\$(ProjectName).%%i.resources.dll"
move /Y "$(TargetDir)%%i\$(ProjectName).resources.dll" "$(TargetDir)%%i\$(ProjectName).%%i.resources.dll"
cscript /nologo "$(SolutionDir)$(ProjectName)\addfiletozip.vbs" "$(TargetDir)%%i\%%i.zip" "$(TargetDir)%%i\$(ProjectName).%%i.resources.dll"
move /Y "$(TargetDir)%%i\%%i.zip" "$(SolutionDir)$(ProjectName)Web\ClientBin\%%i.xap"
del "$(TargetDir)%%i\appmanifest.xaml"
del "$(TargetDir)%%i\$(ProjectName).%%i.resources.dll"
)

4. Source Code

As always there is sample available but i cant upload it to Silverlight Streaming as i cant figure out how to upload an application with multiple xaps.

Update : I figured out how to add the ondemand to silverlight Streaming

Sample : http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6655/ondemand/iframe.html

Source code : http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/ondemand.zip

Note: I tried using the culture=auto object parameter as to automatically detect and load the users culture based on the browser settings, Im sure got this to work at some point before but i cant get it to work now. :-(

Update : I figured out how to get culture=auto to work and updated the code sample on skydrive.

7/5/2008

Silverlight Localizability and Pseudo-Localization

In this sample I’ll try to give you an overview of localizability and some tools that can help assist you in the process, particularity pseudo-localization.

1. What is Localizability?

2. Enter Pseudo-Localization

3. No Custom Cultures yet

4. Code and sample

5. Other news: Bidi

1. What is Localizability?

Localizability is the process to ensure that all UI strings in an application can be translated eg: no hard coded text or text on images. This is under the World-Readiness node of internationalization tree.

We need to do localizability testing on a product to minimize the number of times we need to get our strings translated. We always aim to do one localization or translation cycle to reduce localization costs.

I cant give the subject justice but please review .NET Internationalization and Developing International Software for further information.

A common example of a localizability issues

· Hard coded strings

· Text in images

· Fixed text lengths

· Wrong encoding (eg: ansi rather than utf-8)

For each issue there is an easy workaround

1. Hard code string: Move the hardcoded strings to the global application strings.resx file and reference these resx strings in the UI see http://wpf-e.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2B248D261D0E0035!203.entry

2. Text in images: Remove the string from the image and place in the resx file and make the image a grid that expands to the size of the string see http://wpf-e.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2B248D261D0E0035!232.entry

3. Fixed text lengths: See expandable UI section in http://wpf-e.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2B248D261D0E0035!232.entry

4. Wrong Encoding: This is more a globalization issue rather than a localizability issue but you need to ensure all xaml and resx files are saved at in Unicode (default in visual studio) or UTF8

What is not a localizability issue is, user content stored or external resources. Eg: An international imputed content is designed to differ per user and any text they enter should be stored in their language, so this would be user error if the user inputted English text in a German UI. Also if user german user subscribed to English RSS feed this probably what they wanted.

2. Enter Pseudo-Localization

Pseudo Localization is a test process designed to make to easy to find hard coded strings, fixed width UI or improper encoding. It does this by converting the English UI elements to a extreme internationalized version of the UI

Eg: “Hello {0}” becomes “[Ħęľľő {0}! !!! !!!]”

In the above example the string is

1. The text is wrapped in the square brackets to show easily if a string is clipped

2. Each character or glyph is replaced with an international version of the character, to show if any encoding issues are present

3. The string length is in increased by 40% to show that any width restrictions

There is a excellent tool, Pseudoizer.exe part of the John Robbins MSDN article .NET Internationalization Utilities to convert resx files to this format.

3. No Custom cultures yet

In .net there is the concept of custom cultures and Pseudo Cultures which allow the developer to create non-standard cultures eg: – ES-US or “Spanish – United States” to better target your users.

But the object CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder doesn’t exist yet in Silverlight globalization class so instead we can use some obscure culture to display our pseudo culture eg: en-029 or English – Caribbean

4. Code and sample

Sample: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6655/Pseudo/iframe.html

Code: http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Pseudo.zip

5. Other news: BiDi/RTL

Mark Rideout has stated there is no out-of-box support in 2.0 for Bidirectional or Right to Left text eg: Hebrew and Arabic . But there are some free 3^rd party dlls using nBiDi to provide this functionality http://www.santeon.com/silverlight/ and http://www.codeplex.com/SilverlightRTL

6/27/2008

Silverlight Marketization (Market Customization)

In this article I’ll explain how to use maketization (short for market customization) in Silverlight to reduce your loc costs and to enhance your application for particular market.

1. What is marketization?

2. What should be marketised?

3. Silverlight Example

4. Expandable UI

5. Sample and source code

1. What is Marketization?

Marketization is under the Internationalization tree, it the ability to target a website or application to a particular market rather than simply a language. A language (eg: En = english) can shared in many countries and some countries speak more than one language each having a particalar market or culture (eg: fr-ca = french canada).

Of those familiar with developing sites for international markets, most are familiar with localization (translation of product UI) , but few use the implement the globalization process in full. If you do, you can greatly reduce your external translation costs and provide a more targeted user experience to all your users.

If you are not familiar with the .net localization process I strongly recommend you review .NET Internationalization and Developing International Software, both excellent books on the subject who explain the rest of these subjects better than I ever can.

It reduces loc costs by normalizing your international resources, strings, urls and settings so you only need to translate at the language level rather than down the many market level. Translations dont need to targeted at a paticalar market but they may have some small spelling differences (eg: colour & color) so the text should be translated in formal way and avoid local phares and terms. In .net we have a culture parent language fallback system to enable this eg:

2. What should be marketized?

Website and product UI text translations and strings should all be in one localization strings resx file while the market resx file should contain

a) Market Links/URLs

b) Enabling market specific features settings

c) Tracking and advertizing codes

d) Branding

Generally the market resx will have a small fraction (1/10 - 1/3) of the elements that are in the strings file and it helps to be quite ruthless in the setting that are in your marketiztion settings resource file as it needs to configure for many more markets .

3. Silverlight Example

In this example below we can display national sports of many countries and languages. You need to create 2 resource files and make them bind the UI text to strings resource file and market resx file to control the visibility of elements of the application per country. I wrapped the text in expandable grids that gracefully fit to meet the size of a translation.

A market picker ListBox is binded to the market list to dynamically refresh both the UI language and the culture of the application.

4. Expandable UI

Please remember translation string lengths differ greatly per language and you don’t want to have fixed widths or the text can be clipped or overlapping other UI. It is always recommended for any international user controls to use stackpanels, wrappanels and autosizing grids for international text, as some languages are up 40% longer on average. Long text should allowed wrap (TextWrapping="Wrap") , and add scroll bars (ScrollViewer) as necessary. If UI absolutely cant be expanded then ellipses (...) converter function could be used to restrict the text size but this should be avoided if possible.

5. Sample and Source Code

Live Sample: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6655/Marketization/iframe.html

Source code: http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/marketization.zip

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