Home/ Questions/Q 3608928
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-18T21:33:45+00:00

I’m using Delphi 2007 and I wonder how the following problem can be solved:

  • 0

I’m using Delphi 2007 and I wonder how the following problem can be solved:

I have to translate AComp.Caption for example, but the string that I want to assign to the caption, often depends on some data (for example a date or a number, that gets Formatted). Therefore I have to save the data and the string in a new variable for every translation, which is really annoying.

What I want to do is something like that:

// will add the string and data to an internal list of Translator
// and will then return a DynamicString, which represents the translated value
AComp.Caption := T.NewTranslatedString("Hello %s, do you like cheese?", User)

(Note that AComp.Caption (“Hello %s..”) can be changed in different methods)

When switching to another language, you would call T.TranslateAgain() and the value of all strings will be translated and, if data given, formatted again.

Is this possible or do you know another way for solving the given problem?

Thanks in advance

Additional question:
Are strings normal objects, that I can subclass and add dynamic behaviour that changes the string itself in special cases?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Delphi strings are not objects, you can’t add behaviours to them. You would need to develop your own class.

    The Windows way to localize applications is to get advantage of resources, that can be changed (and loading redirected) without changes to the code (no need to call special functions or add new components), and without run-time calls but to load the resource. The only disadvantage of resources is they cannot be changed easily by the end user. The Delphi 2007 standard localization tools use this approach.

    Anyway there are some libraries like dxGetText (which is a port of the GNU gettext library) or TsiLang, for example that use a more “intrusive” approach, requiring changes to your code or adding components. In exchange they can simplify end-user localization.

    Before developing your own localization library, I would check if one of the existing ones fits youe needs.

    Note: Be aware that Delphi localization tool has significant issues that weren’t fixed until XE (which I didn’t test yet). See for example QC #79449. Unluckily the fix was never backported to earlier releases.

    • 0