Re: Changing the app language
Re: Changing the app language
- Subject: Re: Changing the app language
- From: Alastair Houghton <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 22:02:05 +0100
On 28 Jul 2007, at 20:53, Jeff Bland wrote:
I also don't think a language option in an application is that
unusual, perhaps on
Mac it is since Mac OS X has a wonderful set of system level language
services that applications don't usually need to include this kind
of thing,
as several of you have pointed out.
As you correctly surmise, it *is* unusual on Mac OS X. There are
circumstances under which you might want to, but they're somewhat
specialised.
My application aside though, it is interesting that under Mac OS X,
real-time features such as live resize and having preferences
update as you
change them are supported and encouraged - but when it comes to
switching
languages one has to restart the computer (or relaunch each
application you
want changed - and I'll bet many users don't know how to relaunch
finder
since there's no quit option under finder) before your language
preference
shows up.
It's a trade-off, as usual with these kinds of decisions. The user's
choice of language affects all sorts of things, including exactly
which objects are loaded from nib files (remember, there are separate
nibs for each language, or more specifically for each localization).
In fact, the UI *could* conceivably be radically different for some
applications, e.g. you *might* want extra UI elements and/or
controller objects for users of oriental languages.
So changing on the fly, given the current design of the frameworks,
would be very difficult. One set of UI objects would need to be
unloaded (and your application would have to cope with that), and it
isn't at all clear what to do about e.g. controller objects that are
instantiated from nib files...
I (and probably many multi-lingual people) would be a happy to see
Apple add more support for
real-time language switching
So file a bug report. The concept isn't bad, but I think Cocoa
itself would need to undergo some (possibly awkward) structural
changes to make this workable.
All of this is certaintly a good learning experience and an
interesting
conceptual debate of application design.
:-) That's certainly true.
Kind regards,
Alastair.
--
http://alastairs-place.net
_______________________________________________
Cocoa-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list.
Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden