Localizing ActiveX Control Data (Win32)
Localizing ActiveX Control Data (Win32) |
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Win32 resource script (RC) files (and consequently binary Win32 EXE and DLL files as well) can contain binary property data of an ActiveX control as streamed binary data in a DLGINIT resource. A DLGINIT resource belongs to a dialog box resource that contains the ActiveX control. RC-WinTrans handles this binary data so that it can be translated/localized.
The possibility of editing the property data of an ActiveX control is a unique feature of RC-WinTrans and cannot be found in any other localization tool.
An ActiveX control can be made visible in the Dialog Box view (Figure 3) where RC-WinTrans creates an instance of the ActiveX control and feeds the control with its binary property data. The Dialog Box view provides a command for editing the ActiveX control's properties. The ActiveX control usually offers its own dialog box with property pages where the properties can be edited. If the properties data has been edited this way, RC-WinTrans saves the translated/modified property data as the target data for the ActiveX control.
NOTE: The visibility of binary data is indicated in the Text Table view by the Binary Data symbol (
RC-WinTrans also provides the option of extracting text property data from the binary data to make the text data visible in the Text Table view (Figure 2). This allows the text to be handled in the same manner as all other text. The advantage of this option is that the text is visible and accessible for data operations such as import and export, find text operations, word counting, and statistics. An additional advantage is that the translation data files can be given to a translator so that the translator doesn't have to have the ActiveX control available (registered) on his/her system in order to be able to work with it. This is possible because RC-WinTrans keeps the extracted text properties data as "open" translation units beside the binary DLGINIT data.
The text data of ActiveX controls is extracted to make it accessible for these two processes:
If the option to extract the data is changed (default: OFF), it becomes necessary to force an update of the translation data file. This can be done on the Source Files page of the Source and Target Files dialog box.
To enable text data extraction for an ActiveX control, use the ActiveX Controls Used (Win32 Files) command located in the Project menu. This command opens the ActiveX Controls dialog box where you can access the ActiveX Control Data dialog box to set the option.
A typical and frequently-used ActiveX control is the list-view control from Microsoft (ActiveX control Versions 5.0 and 6.0). The text of the column headers is included in the binary data (DLGINIT resource), but RC-WinTrans can make the text accessible for translation via the control's property pages (Dialog Box view) or through the Text Table view. |
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Figure 1: Sample dialog box with a Microsoft list-view control at run-time. The texts of the three column headers ("Name," "Street," and "City") can be translated with RC-WinTrans. |
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Figure 2: The RC-WinTrans Projects Overview tab in the Workspace bar (left) with the list-view control (ID: 1000) selected. The texts of the three column headers are selected in the Project window (right).
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Figure 3: RC-WinTrans' Dialog Box view showing a dialog box with the sample list-view control selected. The "Properties" dialog box for the list-view control can be opened using the Edit ActiveX Control Properties toolbar button. |
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). In order to get the listed binary data, the 
