VFP All Versions
Frequently Asked Questions

See Also: General INTL Questions - INTL FAQ - INTL 2 FAQ

Q. Do you have a Demo for the VFP versions of INTL?

A. Not at this time, though we are making one. INTL comes with a  30-day money back guarantee, so the cost of trial is essentially zero.

Q. What are the speed ramifications of using this Toolkit. Does it take longer to load a form when the Caption property is read from a table rather than defined within the object?

A. There is a run-time penalty, yes, dependent on the number of controls and the configuration of INTL. If INTL is configured to localize strings (caption, tooltip, statusbartext) only, then it's snappy. if intl is configured to localize strings, fonts, images, data sources, and currencies, then it's proportionately slower.

Having said that, INTL can be tuned. As it ships, for every lookup, INTL checks to make sure the lookup-table is open, that its order is set properly, and so on. If you are in a stable environment, you can comment these tests and make INTL quicker.

Q. Does it handle all Captions i.e. Grid headers, Radio Buttons, Check boxes, Form Captions, Tooltips, Menu options etc. In other words, what does it not handle?

A. INTL handles basically everything:
*- Strings (by Default)
*- Fonts (Optional)
*- Images (Optional)
*- Data sources (Optional)
*- Currencies (Optional)
*- Right-to-Left writing systems (Optional) (Right-to-left is in the VFP 5 version only.)

Menus are handled with a GEMENUX driver, and Reports are localized with a batch routine.

Q. Is it possible to have it such that two users logging into the same network using the same EXE file but one users property is that Captions to be in English whilst another users property is German. Both read the same data tables etc, but one gets an Edit form (say) with English captions whilst another get the German captions?

A. Yes.

Q. How can I update the STRINGS table with all the string references in my application?

A. As follows:
SET PROC to <Path\>intltool.PRG
oIterator = create("CProjectIterator", cPjx)
oVisitor = create("CINTLUpdateVisitor")
oIterator.Accept(oVisitor)

Q. When I build the application into an EXE I ran into some problems. First off, everything works great when running the app (via the main program or the EXE) from within VFP. When I exit VFP and double click on the EXE from Explorer, the language isn't changing. what gives?

A. Make sure you create your INTL object AFTER your application SET PATH statement. If INTL can't find STRINGS.DBF, it won't complain.

Q. When I build the application into an EXE I ran into some problems. First off, everything works great when running the app (via the main program or the EXE) from within VFP. When I exit VFP and double click on the EXE from Explorer, the language isn't changing. What gives?

A. Make sure you create your INTL object AFTER your application SET PATH statement. If INTL can't find STRINGS.DBF, it won't complain.