Multi-Language Add-In for Visual Studio

Posted by Phil on Thu 14 of Jul, 2011 20:48 GMT

Sorry that it has taken me such a long time to reply to this.

There is no direct function to add a new string to the string table, but it is performed automatically if you select a string for translation in the source code.

As a test, I made a small source file:

#include "stdafx.h"

void junk_function()
{
  CString TestText = "Example Text" ;
}

After scanning the project, this is shown in the source code tab.

If I select the text by clicking on the check box...

then a resource ID number is assigned to the string, and the macro ML_STRING is inserted into the code...

#include "stdafx.h"

void junk_function()
{
  CString TestText = ML_STRING(102, "Example Text") ;
}

I was expecting the string table to be generated automatically, but that didn't seem to work.
However, after using the menu command "Store resources for unmanaged projects"...

the files resource.h and projectname.rc were updated.

#define IDS_MULTILANG_102               102

STRINGTABLE PRELOAD DISCARDABLE
BEGIN
    IDS_ABOUTBOX            "&About CmnCtrl1..."
    IDS_MULTILANG_102       "Example Text"
END

The define in resource.h is actually unnecessary, because it isn't really used. The string table in the .rc file is actually much bigger than shown here.

Note that it also generated Croation resources, using the English texts.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Croatian resources (Added by Multi-Language Add-In)

#if !defined(AFX_RESOURCE_DLL) || defined(AFX_TARG_HRV)
#ifdef _WIN32
LANGUAGE LANG_CROATIAN, SUBLANG_NEUTRAL
#endif //_WIN32

STRINGTABLE PRELOAD DISCARDABLE
BEGIN
    IDS_ABOUTBOX            "&About CmnCtrl1..."
    IDS_MULTILANG_102       "Example Text"
END

So, although you can't directly add items to the string table, they are added by the Add-In when you select a string in the source code.

Do you have a requirement to add strings to the string table, which are used in some other manner? I'm sure that I could add such a function, but I'm not sure that it is necessary.

With regard to your other question, about using the original string as the default for other languages, this should work already, as shown with the (non) Croatian text above.

The original text is shown in grey in the Add-In's grid, which is meant to indicate resource fallback. For .NET projects, there is a built-in fallback mechanism. Although this doesn't work with unmanaged resources, the Add-In mimics it by exporting the original text to the .rc file if no language specific text is available.

(This should also work between regional languages and the non-regional parent, e.g. US-English and English.)

I mentioned above that I had expected the .rc file to be updated automatically, but it was not. I will look into this.

I'm also not sure that it was a good idea that the function ml_string (called by the macro ML_STRING) returns a CString object.

Let me know if you have more questions about C++ support.

Best regards
Phil