Adapting the Program to a Different Language

VIEWMOL has been written to take full advantage of the language independence of X windows. All program messages, menus, dialog box texts etc. are stored outside of the program in resource files. Therefore it is possible that different users can run the same VIEWMOL executable in different languages on the same computer. Currently, five languages are supported: English, French4, German, Spanish5, and Russian6. To adapt VIEWMOL to another language only the Xdefaults.<language> file has to be translated. For a native speaker of the language this will take between 45 and 60 minutes.

The Xdefaults.<language> files provided with VIEWMOL have three sections. The first section is related to the installation of external support program, the second section contains default settings (see p. [*]). The third section contains all language dependent messages and this is the only section which needs translation. To translate, translate everything right of the colon. The strings '%s', '%d', or '%f' mark the position of names or numbers which are filled in by the program and must remain in the translated version at the appropriate position. After translation install the new Xdefaults.<language> file as described in the Installation section (cf. p. [*]) and VIEWMOL will talk in your language. The author would appreciate to get a copy of the translated resource file for inclusion in the next public release.



Jörg-Rüdiger Hill
Sun Dec 10 17:38:35 MET 2000