New Project V

I have been burning the midnight oil for a couple of weeks and have come to realise that, as I had the code open on the table, as it were, anyway (yes, just like a surgeon), I may as well "go a little further"*.

So (as well as setting up routines to call alternative captions for form titles, labels etc. as already mentioned), I'm also adding look-up tables for hot-key (keystroke combinations) responses according to what the user is doing, which form has focus etc. (previously these were hard-coded into the program), and a routine to be able to step forward (and back again) through "see also" help topics when a help topic is called (up to five ... it could be more, but I reckon five is enough).

"Feature creep"? Well, perhaps. But as the underlying code is already there, it's really "just" a matter of putting in the hours needed to modify (enhance, tweak, develop, whatever) it all. And, once I've cracked this one, I plan (hope) to give it a rest for a while. Inshallah.

OK, so now I'm at the stage where (when in "design mode") I can see form labels (titles, etc.) that look like:- this_is_a_label. All well and good.

Depending upon the Language setting this can show become This is a label or (rather handily) C'est une étiquette or Este es una etiqueta or even This is a kludge when back in normal mode. In other words, it can be whatever you (the user, that is) chooses it to be. Or, more accurately, bothers to change it to!

So that others may not feel left out here, I could have just as easily chosen:-

Das ist ein etikett
Questo è un marchio
Isto é uma etiqueta

... or any other (bad) translation:-

Ez egy olyan címke
To je štítok
Dây là mot nhãn hieu

... et cetera. And please note (no doubt with sincere admiration), how far and to what extent the "PC campaign" has touched us all here in the UK ... it now seems that even I have been affected (infected?)!

But now I am am wondering if it would be better to provide just the two look-up captions:- namely, English and Local (or whatever ... perhaps I'll come up with better handle at some stage). I am reasoning here that each user is unlikely to be in need of more than one set of alternative captions. That way, I can leave the user to do the work (much preferred)! It will also get them "involved", and may even generate some feedback from them!

So, users who prefer different captions can change and edit them to whatever they want. Be it French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Creole, Pidgin, "predictive text techo-babel" ... or whatever. This means that no single "language" is given precedence over another (oh yes, we're all "PC" now)! Er, apart from English, that is ... but the code has to be written in something, and it happens to be English (or, perhaps more accurately, quasi-American "English" computer-speak). But the really good news is that I get to do (far) less work.

Yes ... the more I think about it, this has to be the way forward!

So, en avant!

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand. *