Is it ok to roll your own localization framework? I would be ok using the default .NET localization behavior (i.e., putting text in resource files named a certain way in the assembly), except that we have localized images and text that need to be rendered in DirectX in addition to WinForms and WPF.
I could put form-specific strings in one place and other strings somewhere else, but I think that it makes more sense to keep everything in one place, not to mention it will help to avoid duplicates (for domain values like Yes/No, etc.). It’s also possible we may be moving this tool to another platform in the future, so it would be nice to have all the localization information in one platform-agnostic area.
I realize this is a little subjective, but I’m looking for a best practice here…I’ve worked on projects that take both approaches. Any thoughts?
I have developed systems in which localisation is implemented via database-stored data and metadata. If your app is already making intense use of a fast database backend, you could create a database-backed localisation layer and use it to store localised information, including textual and non-textual data. It has worked great for us in a few ocasions.
Edit. The details won’t fit in here, but basically we mirrored the logic of the key/value resource manager that the Windows API or .NET use. We extended that by allowing resources to be grouped into groups, which can be nested arbitrarily. Resource names can be given as, for example, “ClientManagement.MainForm.StatusBar.ReadyMsg”, meaning the ready message text to display on the status bar of the main form in the client management user interface. On app startup, a locale setting is read from a config file and a resource manager initialised with it; all the subsequent calls to the resource manager will be using such a locale setting until explicitly changed. We also built an administrative user interface that allowed us to edit the resources stored in the database, and even add new languages. A final comment: data to be localised is not only labels and icons on screen. Option values in combo boxes, for example, also need to be localised.