Languages and Locales

One of the common tasks that pops up at the bottom of the screen after running a dependency check in Target Designer is “Regional and Language Options requires at least one additional enabled component not in the configuration” and presents you with a selection of many different language support components. Most people would add one of these language support components to their configuration, believing that the runtime might be broken if you do not have a language specified. In fact, this dependency task is somewhat misleading, on two fronts.

Firstly, if you do not satisfy this dependency your runtime will operate just fine, providing you need an English user interface.

Secondly, if you add a language support component, it does not mean that you have added a MUI pack (Multi User Interface pack). What the Language Support components adds to the runtime are the code pages, fonts and keyboard layouts for the relevant language group you have selected- see first screenshot. It also adds the different locales associated with that language- see second screenshot. You can think of the locales as the different “dialects” for a particular language. For example, English is used in the USA, UK, South Africa, Australia etc., but there are unique differences in the way it is used. Note, however, that the English Language Support component has to be in the configuration in order for any of the locales for any language to be visible in the Regional and Language Options component.

For full user interface localization you will still have to import the particular language MUI pack into your database. This will bring in the MUI files for the features that are localized when you build your image. MUI packs can be downloaded and imported from here.

For more information about Language Support in XP Embedded see the Overview article and the Language Support article on msdn.

- Lynda