Rules and Standards

CAA V5 NLS Compliance Rules

Standard NLS rules for CAA V5 applications

Technical Article

Abstract

Messages in V5 code should support multiple languages (National Language Support, or NLS), including Double-Byte encoded languages such as Japanese or Korean. For this to happen, strings are externalized in so-called PII files, named *.CATNls and *_en.properties depending on the underlying V5 infrastructure. Here is the set of rules that the developer should comply with in order for externalization to work properly.

NLS Dependent Data
Strings in Code
Resource File Contents

NLS Dependent Data

NLS-dependent data should never be stored as such in any model, except if it was entered manually by the user. In case of NLS-dependent strings made from different parts, the string should not be stored as result, and it should be dynamically computed. It is safe to store NLS keys, allowing to retrieve dynamically the associated language-dependent string.

As a result of this rule, do not use the SetName() method for a feature which would store a language-dependent name in the model for the concerned feature factory.

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Strings in Code

No message strings in code but their corresponding keys. Message are to be in PII files (see next section).

Use the table hereunder to perform operations on strings:

Operation	CATNls-Based Infrastructure in C++	CATNls-Based Infrastructure in java	*.properties Based Infrastructure (java)
Retrieve a message (with or without parameters) from NLS file	CATMessageCatalog.BuildMessage()	CATMessageCatalog.BuildMessage() in com.dassault_systemes.catjsystem	java.text.MessageFormat
Format numbers and currencies	CATUnicodeString standard methods (nothing for currencies)	java.text.NumberFormat
Format dates	CATTime	java.text.DateFormat java.text.SimpleDateFormat
Tokenize a string (strtok equivalent)	CATToken In case of char*, use CATSysStrtok	java.util.StringTokenizer
Compare strings (strcmp equivalent)	CATUnicodeString::operator== CATUnicodeString::Compare()	String.compareTo() String.compareToIgnoreCase()

Beware of strings and GUI display truncation issues, especially regarding Double-Byte translations.
In C++, don’t confuse following methods, that lead to different results in DBCS context:
- CATUnicodeString::GetLengthInChar() – retrieve number of characters in a string
- CATUnicodeString::GetLengthInByte() – retrieve numbers of bytes in a string, used to allocate an array or example.

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Resource File Contents

PII files (*.CATNls, *_en.properties) should include only translatable text that should be translated
Non-NLS strings, such as icon names, should be in *.CATRsc and *.properties (without _en) files. This includes:
- File path, file name, file extension
- Numbers: list dimensions, time delay, default value, etc.
- ISO codepages
- ENOVIA specific syntaxes: names combined with ., +, -
*.CATNls keys should only contain plain ASCII characters.

History

Version: 1.0 [Dec 2004]	Document created
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