Creating Muli Lingual Applications

vb.net 2003

I currently maintain two versions of my application. One is in Spanish and the other is English. I am getting ready to add Portuguese. My application has context menus' and error messages, and button names which need to be in a specific language for a particular build. Can I have one project where my menus', text messages, and button names can be toggled between the three languages. I would like to have one project in which I can easily build applications for my three languages.

Thanks,

Visual Basic5

There is a standard "pattern" for doing what you want in .NET - it's called "satellite assemblies." The basic principle is that you load your UI strings from an external assembly based on the current locale.

Here is a fairly good article describing it: http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/10/14/local2.htm

localizing Windows Forms applications. This is achieved through resources files

A good walkthrough on MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp url=/library/en-us/vbcon/html/vbwlkwalkthroughlocalizingwindowsforms.asp

and some other items

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/SatelliteAssemblies.asp

http://visualbasic.about.com/od/usingvbnet/a/ResVBNET.htm

Also the 101 samples

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/code/101samples/

e Class Libraries - Group 2 has an example Building in support for localization which may be worth a look