Fixing that small internationalization gaffe
The engineers resolved the internationalization problem. Sort of.
They've modified the logic so that it no longer depends on the hardcoded presence of "&Tools" to pull the resources in correctly from two separate DLLs. However, it still looks for the literal "&Edit" in each DLL. If it doesn't find it, the submenu items do not show up. I know, because I broke it again with a random pseudo-translation pass that rendered "&Edit" as "&ßéüdßéüt" in one resource file and "&ßéüñdßéüñt" in the other.
"Well, what do you expect?" asked the developer, when I explained this to him. "Get your pseudo-act together and you won't find problems like this."
I granted him that it was very unlikely that "&Edit" would be translated differently in two places - well, it could happen, but it should not happen - but that was not the point. It's just not good programming practice to depend on string literals like that, whether localization engineering is a concern or not. "Why don't you make the dependency on the string ID instead? Localization will never go near that."
"Submit a ticket on it and we'll see for next time," he replied. "I've got other dragons to slay right now."
So, I filed the request and the enhancement is in the great cosmic wash of the engineering team's Issue Review system.
They've modified the logic so that it no longer depends on the hardcoded presence of "&Tools" to pull the resources in correctly from two separate DLLs. However, it still looks for the literal "&Edit" in each DLL. If it doesn't find it, the submenu items do not show up. I know, because I broke it again with a random pseudo-translation pass that rendered "&Edit" as "&ßéüdßéüt" in one resource file and "&ßéüñdßéüñt" in the other.
"Well, what do you expect?" asked the developer, when I explained this to him. "Get your pseudo-act together and you won't find problems like this."
I granted him that it was very unlikely that "&Edit" would be translated differently in two places - well, it could happen, but it should not happen - but that was not the point. It's just not good programming practice to depend on string literals like that, whether localization engineering is a concern or not. "Why don't you make the dependency on the string ID instead? Localization will never go near that."
"Submit a ticket on it and we'll see for next time," he replied. "I've got other dragons to slay right now."
So, I filed the request and the enhancement is in the great cosmic wash of the engineering team's Issue Review system.
Labels: I18n, internationalization, pseudo translation
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