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Silverlight 4 add Bidi support
Binding to Server based Resx Files in Silverlight 3
In Silverlight you can easily bind to compiled resx files, and the translations are baked into your xap as resourse dlls. In the majority of cases this is fine, as translations don’t change very often unless the UI changes which mean re-translation and redeploying anyway.
Editorial Content
If you have content, that needs to be changed frequently, you should use RIA Services or WCF that binds some editorial section that is not locked in your regular UI strings. Examples of this would be : Special Offers, promotions etc…. The translator would update your Content Management System and translate a default English text or promote something specific to that market. Eg: NFL tickets for US and Rugby Tickets for France. Then your RIA or WCF would poll this content from your CMS system each time your Silverlight application page loads for that market. This way the core translations are still baked into app but you have flexibility, to update certain parts of the UI dynamically. Code for this is pretty standard RIA services and is out of scope for this article. I may post a sample if people are interested.
Server based Resx
Under some circumstances a mixture of core UI and editorial content is not flexible enough. You may not want all your translation compiled into one mega xap or use MEF for dynamic resource loading, but keep them uncompiled on the server side until user requests a different language. In the example project below, I use a English resx with no code generation and stored as static resource. When the page loads it reads the local resx in the xap and creates strongly typed dynamic object of the dictionary using reflection. We wrap this in the LocStrings class that implements inotifypropertychanged interface to allow dynamic loc string binding.
When the user selects a different culture in the dropdown the we make a request to the server get the resx. We then set the contents to LocStrings and update the thread culture.
Possible uses include:
– Reuse translations from your aspx site
– Add new languages dynamically
ViewBox in Localization
In reading a SVG localization article I noticed developers sometime need some way to update fontsize based on the character length of a translation in some . Part of the Silverlight Toolkit contains a control called viewbox. A viewbox in WPF or Silverlight is a layout control that scale transforms it contents to fit the dimensions of it container. This should be used sparing and instead you grid that expands to the size on the content and translations using Textwrapping and scrollviewers.
Code: http://cid-289eaf995528b9fd.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/ServerResx.zip
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6655/ServerResX/iframe.html
Silverlight 3 Intl Improvements
As you aware by now Silverlight 3 is now available on http://microsoft.com/silverlight
Below is a list of international features that have seen updated in this release.
1. Comprehensive documentation on localization : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838238(VS.95).aspx
2. Local Font support including Cambria and Segoe UI http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd547542(VS.95).aspx
3. ClearType support (Tip: Greatly improved but use native resolution)
4. Merged Dictionary Support
5. Element to Element Binding
6. Bug fixs – Improved support for asian cultures on XP, thai input issue
Im still waiting patiently for the localized runtimes and tools but that is generally very quick after the main launch.
Anyway below is a sample enables updating UI strings in realtime without re-starting your application.
This uses a singleton class to the PublicResxFileCodeGenerator that implements iNotifyProperyChanged
public class LocStrings :INotifyPropertyChanged
{
// INotifyPropertyChanged plumbing
public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
private void NotifyChange(String name)
{
if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
}
//public constructor
public LocStrings()
{
}
// PublicResXFileCodeGenerator
private static loc.Strings lStrings = new loc.Strings();
public loc.Strings LStrings {
get { return lStrings; }
set { NotifyChange("LStrings");}
}
}
private void ComboBox_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
ComboBox langddl = sender as ComboBox;
string selectedLang = (langddl.SelectedItem as ComboBoxItem).Content.ToString(); ;
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(selectedLang);
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(selectedLang);
((LocStrings)this.Resources["LStrings"]).LStrings = new SL3Loc.loc.Strings();
}
Demo: http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6655/SL3loc/iframe.html
Code: http://cid-2b248d261d0e0035.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/SL3Loc.zip
BTW: SilverlightRTL updated their excellent code to work on SL3 http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/alex_golesh/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-hebrew-and-arabic-support.aspx
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
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 (Explained in detail here)
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
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
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
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
<param name="culture" value="de" />
<param name="uiculture" value="de" />
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
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.
Updated: See bluetext control on http://wpf-e.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2B248D261D0E0035!407.entry for code sample
Silverlight : on demand culture downloader
{
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;
}
}
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;
}
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"
)
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 3rd party dlls using nBiDi to provide this functionality http://www.santeon.com/silverlight/ and http://www.codeplex.com/SilverlightRTL