HP 3000 Manuals

MPE XL Native Language Programmer's Guide

Multilingual Applications 

The program in Figure 7-4 shows a localizable or multilingual
application.  This application can be used in several countries or in
multiple languages by different users on the same system.  The key
attribute of this program is that it selects its language(s) at run time.

When installing an application on a system, the manager of the
application may establish configuration file(s) for that application.
These files store information about various end-users or transactions and
their native language requirements.  At run time, the application program
can determine which language(s) to use.

The program may call the NLGETLANG intrinsic to obtain the system default
language (which can be set by the system manager when native languages
are configured), or it may prompt the end user to enter a language name
or ID number (langnum).

The application may call NLGETLANG to obtain the user interface language
and/or the data manipulation language.  The job control words NLUSERLANG
and NLDATALANG must be in place before invoking this type of application.
This method could be too restrictive if many end users or transactions
requiring different languages are handled from one job or session.

Once the languages have been determined, the program opens the
appropriate VPLUS forms files, message catalogs, and/or command files,
based on the user interface language choice.  It also opens any needed
IMAGE databases, KSAM files, or general data files; these may or may not
depend upon language choice.  The appropriate language ID numbers are
used in calling the various native language intrinsics.  Different end
users may concurrently run the same program with different languages.
The application can be designed to use more than one language within a
single execution.  For example, one language may be used for data
manipulation and a different one for user interactions.


          Figure 7-4.  Multilingual Application 

MPE/iX 5.0 Documentation