Showing posts with label NLS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NLS. Show all posts

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Identifying the language used in the software

The software you uses may be used by people using other language. A software may be designed to support multiple languages.

One scenario is that the software may be designed to support multiple languages with different versions. You install the version of the software available in a language. If you want to use the software in a different language, you need to install a different version.

A software may allow different user who install it to use a different language, but while you are installing, you need to specify which language you are using. A variation to this scenario is that you can switch the language you want to use even after installation. However, you can only use one language at a time.

Some software allows multiple users and each user can have a different language preference. These users may store their own data in different languages. The software can display different language based on user preference and store the data in different languages. An extreme of this scenario is that the data created by a user can be stored in a language but can be displayed to another user in different language.

In all the above cases, one of the common requirement is to allow the user to specify a language.

How does the language is identified? How does the user tell the system which language they are using?