Wish: Opportunity to localize accelerator keys.

[Sören Gellendin]

 Posted by:  Sören Gellendin 

english -> deutsch

Ctrl -> Strg
Shift -> Umschalt
Enter -> Eingabe
.
.
etc.

[Uwe van der Horst]

After nearly 10 years: Has anyone found a trick how to do this?

[Jeff Luther]

Uwe -- Let me be sure I understand what you want: You wan to change a menu accelerator prompt, like "Ctrl+F" to "Strg+F". Is this what you want?

If so, I thought I had that 'trick' you are asking for: Use the CDK to modify a menu item's 'Keyboard Accelerator' string during runtime. I kluge'd down my CDKTutorial sample but it's not working:
>> The first PB in the test case returns the correct value for a named menu item's Ctrl+F accelerator in the form. I display various parts of the menu code, including the current accelerator.

>> The CDK has a GetSet pair of functions which generally work fine, but in the case of the accelerator the CDK's SetAttribute() call is failing. I don't know why and the only guess I can make is perhaps TD does a lookup (???) to check the list of valid keybd. accelerators and for my U.S. PC "Strg+F" isn't valid? A real guess as to why this code doesn't work.

Maybe on your German machine it will work? At least, some code is there for your own testing. Turn on animate before clicking the Change PB to see the code. Let us know if you figure out what is wrong.

The enclosed test case is written in TD v5.2, same as original CDK tutorial app.

[H3PO4]

Hi Jeff,

on my german machine the sample also fails.

We are changing the accelerator text strings by replacing them with

Set sText = VisMenuGetText(hWndForm,hMenu,0)
Set sText = VisStrSubstitute( sText, "Ctrl+", "Strg+" )
Call VisMenuSetText( hWndForm, hMenu, 0, sText )
(very simplified example...)

Best regards
Henning

[Jeff Luther]

So a menu name of yours might look something like this?

Code: Select all

Menu Item: Menu &One	Ctrl+O

That is, the name contains a "Ctrl+O" tabbed to the right and your VisMenu & VisStr code would change the name/title of the menu to this?

Code: Select all

Menu Item: Menu &One	Strg+O

If so, then clicking Ctrl+O would not pop up that menu -- unless I am missing something -- because Ctrl+O is part of the name/title and not the keyboard accelerator.
Kindly clarify, if you would. Maybe I am just missing something.

BTW, I played with this idea a bit and for anyone who wants code to at least change the menu titles like Henning mentions, here is code that will, for example, change the submenu names' subtext "Ctrl" to "Strg" under a popup menu:

Code: Select all

Set hMenu = VisMenuGetHandle( hWndForm )
Set hPopupMenu = VisMenuGetPopupHandle (hMenu, 0 )
Set nMenu = 0
Set nMenusTotal = VisMenuGetCount( hPopupMenu )
While nMenu < nMenusTotal
	Set sText = VisMenuGetText( hWndForm, hPopupMenu, nMenu )
	Set sText = VisStrSubstitute( sText, "Ctrl+", "Strg+" )
	Call VisMenuSetText( hWndForm, hPopupMenu, nMenu, sText )
	!
	Set nMenu = nMenu+1

[H3PO4]

Jeff,

the change would not make sense, if the accelerator does not work afterwards.

But changing only the menutext does not make the accelerator invalid.

See your sample below...

Best regards
Henning

[Uwe van der Horst]

Hi Jeff,
hi Henning,

Let me be sure I understand what you want: You wan to change a menu accelerator prompt, like "Ctrl+F" to "Strg+F". Is this what you want?

Yes, this is exactly what I want for the menu of my MDI-Window.

But changing only the menutext does not make the accelerator invalid.

You are right, changing the menu text does not effect the accelerator.

We are changing the accelerator text strings by replacing them with

Set sText = VisMenuGetText(hWndForm,hMenu,0)
Set sText = VisStrSubstitute( sText, "Ctrl+", "Strg+" )
Call VisMenuSetText( hWndForm, hMenu, 0, sText )

Yes, this works. Now my menu has "German" keyboard shortcuts and the accelerators are still valid.
BUT: I have to use recursion to translate all my menu items one by one - and this takes many time on my (local!) testsystem - about 5 seconds for my main menu.
As speed is much more important I will make no changes here. But thank you for looking into this.

AcceleratorTranslation.png

[H3PO4]

Hello Uwe,

5 seconds - that is a long time for changing text in menus.

We use it as a workaround, our menus may not have as much entries as yours.

The 'real' solution would be that OpenText uses the 'local' values like Microsoft does...

Best wishes for the Pfingsten-Holidays
Henning

[thomas.uttendorfer]

Hi folks,
we translate our large MDI-Menu using the menu functions from user32.dll (see list below).
With those we translate hundreds of menu item texts from german to english and it takes a small fraction of a second.
Maybe have a try with them.
Regards Thomas

• GetMenu

• GetSubMenu

• InsertMenuA

• DeleteMenu

• RemoveMenu

• AppendMenuA

• GetMenuItemCount

• GetMenuStringA

• GetMenuState

• GetMenuItemID

• ModifyMenuA

• EnableMenuItem

[H3PO4]

Hi Uwe,

attached is a very small sample, that shows, how to use the ModifyMenu-function from the windows sdk.

I took an example from the great Team Developer Sample Vault (thanks Dave) and played around.

On my machine the translation of 19 menus with submenus lastet not longer than 2 hundreds of a second...

HTH
Henning

[Jeff Luther]

Thanks for the sample, Henning.

NOTE TO EVERYONE -- the attached text file was saved in TD v6.2 and I found it very interesting that when I opened and tried to compile it in v6.3 that all the menu entries failed with 'duplicate' errors for the menu declarations. Very odd!!!

I back-converted it to v5.2 using my convert utility: viewtopic.php?f=27&t=104
and it now can open and run with TD 5.2, 6.x or 7.0.

[EwaldP]

I also noticed, but I deleted them by hand because I have no 6.2 installed.

[Uwe van der Horst]

@Henning: Your sample works as fast as the lightning. Thank you very much for your help.

[H3PO4]

You're welcome!

Henning

[H3PO4]

Hi all,

funny: The loop forward through the menu entries (0-n) 'hides' the first entry in a menu. The entry can be accessed via Shortcut.
Doing the same with the loop backward all menu entries are shown.

Some would declare this as a feature

Best regards
Henning