Hi Tom, > On Jul 19, 2021, at 10:17 AM, tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote: > [..] > similar to what original MSDOS did: have a language specific > distribution for everything. > > this could be done the way COMMAND does this: somhow combine (actually > append) the translated stuff to the .exe and have kitten figure this > out. > > this could be either > > attach all translated stuff to the program, select language at > runtime, using %LANG% > > or attach only one selected translated stuff for the default language. > > in either case copying the program also copies the relevant resources.
As a perfect world solution, it isn’t a terrible idea. Lets assume the installer asked not only what language was going to be used. But, also provided a method for the user to pick any additional languages the user desired. It would then tack those on to the executable as well. The programs themselves could be modified to pick the appropriate one from the set of attached languages instead of loading them from disk. The end of the program + languages file could contain a signature and marker to the start of the language data. That way, a user could run a special tool to change those languages and default language at any time, even after installation. That would also provide a way to update just the translations. This would reduce file system clutter and prevent issues with translation files being forgotten during copying. I really only see two potential trade-offs. First, is an unknown and would require testing. For programs with little translated text (most of them), it is probably faster to load all the translations along with the executable. But for some programs (Like PGME, HELP), translations can be 30K + per language. With 10 different languages (currently PGME only has 4 languages other than English), it would be faster to load the executable and translation file separately. But, huge amounts of translated text are rare. Other than help, I don’t thing any part of BASE has large amounts of language translations. Performance testing would need to be done. But, overall it would probably be a little quicker. Second for COM files, you would need to load it all at once requiring more RAM for the initial loading and possible preventing some memory resident programs from be able to load into upper memory on some computers. But again, this would probably not effect many programs. Also, it would reduce complexity in simple programs and probably speed up loading time. I don’t see that tacking a bunch of translations onto the end of the program as being worse than using an external language resource. In some ways it is much better. But, it does have its own set of trade-offs. :-) Jerome
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