1.
The structure of your application
determines the files and resources that you will deploy to your server. These
components vary depending on your application's complexity and resource usage
patterns. For example, your application might be entirely self-contained within
a single application package file. Alternately, it might use a variety of
separate resources, such as data or media files, deep-zoom image collections,
or Web services.
2.
When you create a localized
application, you also create one or more satellite assemblies that contain
resources localized for specific cultures and locales. You can deploy all
satellite assemblies within a single application package, or create application
packages that target one or more cultures and provide logic on the server that
downloads the appropriate package to each user.
3.
Globalization is closely related to
localization. It involves designing and developing applications that support
localized user interfaces and regional data for users in multiple cultures.
4.
The invariant culture is loosely based
on the English language but is culture-independent.
5.
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture returns a
CultureInfo object that represents the user's current culture. The current
culture can be set on a per-thread basis and is used in operations such as
parsing, formatting, and culture-sensitive casing, sorting, and string
comparison.
6.
CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture returns a
CultureInfo object that represents the user's current user interface (UI)
culture. The current UI
culture can be set on a pre-thread basis and is used in retrieving resources
from satellite assemblies.
7.
If you retrieve a CultureInfo object
that represents either the current culture or the current UI culture, or if you
instantiate a new CultureInfo object that represents the user's current
culture, the CultureInfo object will reflect any customizations that the user
has made.
8.
The .NET Framework for Silverlight
provides data for the invariant culture, but it retrieves information about all
other cultures from the operating system. This means that the information that
is available to a specific culture may differ across operating systems or even
across versions of the same operating system. In some cases, data may even be
unavailable, in which case data from the invariant culture will be used
instead. The developer should make no fixed assumptions about the values of
particular properties or particular objects returned by specific cultures.
9.
The document is returned using the
default serialization format, which is Atom. When the browser is used to query
the data service, this is the only format supported.
10. The
.NET Framework for Silverlight retrieves the CultureInfo object from two
properties: CultureInfo.CurrentCulture, which is used in text casing and
comparisons, as well as in formatting dates and numbers; and CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture,
which is used to retrieve user interface resources.
11. In
some cases, you may want to change the current culture or the current UI
culture of your Silverlight-based application. However, the
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture and CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture properties are
read-only. Therefore, they cannot be used to change the current culture. To change the current culture, you must
assign a new CultureInfo object to the Thread.CurrentCulture property of the
current thread.
12. In
the .NET Framework for Silverlight, a customized CultureInfo object can be
created only by modifying an existing object. You cannot create a new custom
CultureInfo object from scratch. To
customize the values of a read-only CultureInfo object, you must make a copy of
the original object by calling the CultureInfo.Clone method.
This method returns a read/write copy of the original CultureInfo object.
Unlike most Clone methods, it also returns an enhanced shallow copy of the
objects returned by the CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat, CultureInfo.NumberFormat,
CultureInfo.Calendar, and CultureInfo.TextInfo properties.
13. The
culture that is returned by the CultureInfo.InvariantCulture property
represents neither a neutral nor a specific culture. It represents a third type
of culture that is culture-insensitive. This culture is associated with the
English language, but it is not associated with a country or region. You can
use the InvariantCulture property with almost any method in the
System.Globalization namespace that requires a culture.
14. Use
the invariant culture for operations that require culture-independent results.
In other cases, it might produce results that are linguistically incorrect or
culturally inappropriate.
15.
The
XAML parser in SilverLight always uses the English ("en") culture. This
means that, if your application generates XAML dynamically and then loads it at
run time by using the XamlReader.Load method, any numeric data should be
formatted using the conventions of the "en" culture rather than the
current culture.
16. Visual
Studio and the .NET Framework common language runtime handle most of the
details of compiling the resource files and loading the appropriate resource
for the user's current culture, provided that the resource files have been
named correctly and the project has been configured properly.
17. When
the project is compiled, the resources for the default culture are included in
the main assembly for the Silverlight-based application, which is included in
the .xap file. In addition, the satellite assembly for each culture that is
specified by the <SupportedCultures> property in the project file is
included in the application's .xap file. Each satellite assembly is also listed
in the <Deployment.Parts> section of the AppManifest.xml file.
18. In
the application's .xap file, each satellite assembly is packaged in a
subdirectory of the application directory. The individual satellite assemblies
are all named applicationName.Resources.dll and are stored in a subdirectory
whose name specifies the culture that is represented by the satellite
assembly's resources. For example, resources for the German (Germany) culture
("de-DE") are stored in the de-DE subdirectory.
19. This
approach creates a download that includes all the localizable resources of a
Silverlight-based application. If an application has been localized for many
cultures or the size of localized resources is significant, this method of
deployment will increase the size of the application and lengthen its download
time. Instead, you can create separate versions of a Silverlight-based
application that target specific cultures.
20. Making
XAML localizable is similar to localizing code: You place all the localizable
strings into a separate resource (.resx) file, and you use XAML code that
extracts the strings from that file. To extract the strings, you use the
{Binding} markup extension to bind a XAML property to the strongly typed
wrapper that Visual Studio generates for resource files.
21. You
can also make XML content, rich text, non-string values, and non-dependency
properties localizable.
22. To
support localized out-of-browser applications, you have to create a new .xap
file for each localized culture or locale that your application supports. In
Visual Studio, you can do this by creating new build configurations.
23. You
may also want to make the window title, shortcut name, and description of the
out-of-browser application localizable. Ordinarily, an out-of-browser
application retrieves its window settings from the application's
OutOfBrowserSettings.xml configuration file. To localize the application's
window settings, you create a unique OutOfBrowserSettings.xml file for each
culture that you support.
24. A
translated string may take more room on the screen than the original string.
For this reason, it is recommended that you use automatic layout for elements
that contain localized text.
25. Avoid
the Canvas control, which uses hard-coded sizes and positions. Instead, use the
Grid control, the StackPanel, or other panel elements that support automatic
layout.
26. To
properly display Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text, Silverlight needs to know
which language it is displaying, because the same Unicode characters are
displayed differently depending on language. Silverlight determines the
language from the FrameworkElement.Language property or from the xml:lang attribute.
If your XAML applies to only a single language, you can simply set the property
at the top of the file.
27. If
you want your XAML to be localizable, you want to set the Language property to
a localized value. To do this, create an entry such as Language in your
resource file, and assign it a value that is the name of the localized language
or culture. Change the XAML to use a {Binding} markup extension in the same way
that you would localize any other property.
28. In
most cases, you want users to download a Silverlight-based application that
contains only the resources of their neutral and specific culture, instead of
the resources in the complete set of localized satellite assemblies. You can
use Visual Studio to create a localized Silverlight-based application that
contains a designated subset of your application's satellite assemblies. You
can then use ASP.NET to deploy the application based on the user's culture.
29. Determining
the User's Culture; Retrieving Specific Localized Resources.
