Re: Programming for the World in Ada95

["Jean-Pierre Rosen" <rosen.adalog@wanadoo.fr>]

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John J Cupak Jr <John_J_Cupak@res.raytheon.com> a �crit dans le message :
38A83838.44A43A7D@res.raytheon.com...
> Ah, Ada Gurus"
>
> Does anyone have any experiences, thoughts, or comments on how to write
> Ada 95 so that user messages, etc., are EASILY modified for different
> spoken/read languages, as noted in O'Donnel's excellent book,
> "Programming for the World"?
>
> Is there an easy way to specify message strings at load time, or must
> this be done at compile time?
>
Of course, the solution depends on your requirements.
If you just want *messages* in several languages, and accept to have
selection of the language at compile time, here is a useful trick:

declare all your messages as constants in packages, one package per
language, i.e.
package Messages_English is
  -- english constants here
end Messages_English;

package Messages_French is
  -- french constants here
end Messages_French;

Every module then declares:
with Messages;

And you simply declare a library level renaming:
with Messages_English;
package Messages renames Messages_English;

By simply changing "_English" to "_French" in the above two lines, all your
application will switch to French.

For an example of using this technique, see package Debug, available from
Adalog's components page (http://pro.wanadoo.fr/adalog/compo2.htm). Note
that this technique can be extended (to a certain extent) to manage inputs:
You declare the character that means "yes" ('y' or 'o'), etc.

--
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           J-P. Rosen (Rosen.Adalog@wanadoo.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://pro.wanadoo.fr/adalog