Visual Font Localization

Fonts are essential part of localization. Sisulizer makes font localization easy. Basically you have four choices in font localization:

• Localization item by item
• Common font changing
• Use generic font
• Do not change the font

Localization item by item

Every time there is a font data in a resource data Sisulizer adds a font row into the project. To localize that specific font data just enter localized font name and/or font size. When creating the localized files Sisulizer replaces the original font data with the localized font data. This method makes it possible to fully control what font is used in each case. The disadvantage is that there might be dozens or even hundreds of font items in a project making the font localization quite laborious.

Common font changing

Easier way it to use common font change rules. The source dialog contains fonts sheet that let's you specify how the font changing is done. The basic idea is to change all certain fonts in a similar way.

Use generic font

The best approach is to use a generic font in the application. Such a font is not an actual font but it is always mapped to a real font. Operating system takes care that the generic font is mapped to the default user interface font of the system. If the application that you localize uses a generic font you should not localize fonts. It is better to let operating system to map the generic font to the actual user interface font on runtime.

In Windows MS Shell Dlg 2 is a generic font. MS Shell Dlg 2 is the standard user interface font of Windows. You should use it always when writing applications. If an application use MS Shell Dlg 2 Windows will map the font to actual font on runtime. This mapping depends on the version and language of your operating system. On English Windows XP it is Tahoma. On Simplified Chinese XP it is Simsun. Using MS Shell Dlg 2 always ensures that the font of your application uses the default user interface font of the target operating system. You can check the current value by using the registry editor and opening"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes" key.

Do not change the font

The default action is to do nothing. Then the localized files will have the same font data as the original files. If the computer where the localized file is run does not have that font installed the operating system will use some other.

VCL

When Sisulizer localizes VCL forms it can also update the TFont.Charset property to match the target language. The property values is updated if the character set updating is not turned off and the original value of the Charset property is the default one (DEFAULT_CHARSET).