Multilingual support in LANSA Composer
Irrespective of the language in which LANSA Composer windows, menu and messages are shown, you can, of course, use your local language when entering, displaying and printing LANSA Composer definitions such as Activities, Configurations, Transformation maps and Processing Sequences (providing the client and server systems both support the character sets or code-pages required and provide the necessary client-server translations).
But in addition, LANSA Composer provides limited support for holding such definitions in more than one language. If used, this would mean, for example, that a user running LANSA Composer in English could see English descriptions and notes for definitions such as Activities, Configurations, Transformation maps and Processing Sequences, while another user connected to the same LANSA Composer server system could see the same definitions with French descriptions and notes.
This multilingual support is presently provided ONLY for the following parts of LANSA Composer definitions:
- descriptions for each definition
- notes associated with each definition
When you create new definitions in LANSA Composer, the description and notes entered are saved as a "base" language. If the current language is not English they also saved as a "translation" for the current language.
If you wish to enter translations for these items, then you must start the LANSA Composer client again in the alternate language and re-enter the descriptions and notes in that language. Doing so will not alter the descriptions and notes that were originally entered and saved as the "base" language. The descriptions and notes will be retained in the LANSA Composer database for both languages.
If a translation is not present for an item for the current language, LANSA Composer will display the description or notes for the "base" language. The "base" language is implicitly the language with which the definition was initially created.
Note however, that for the purpose of subsequent modification, the "base" language is assumed to be English. That is, you can only modify the "base" language version of the description and notes when running the LANSA Composer client in English. (Remember, if LANSA Composer was running in a language other than English when you created the definitions, then the description and notes were saved as both the "base" language and for the current language. If you subsequently modified the definitions while running LANSA Composer client in the same language, then only the second set were modified in the database - the "base" language description and notes were not modified.)
Scope and purpose of the Multilingual support
The multilingual support described above is mainly intended to allow LANSA to provide supplied Activity and other definitions with descriptions and notes in the languages for which we also provide LANSA Composer product translations, viz:
- English
- French
- Japanese
While running LANSA Composer in any one language, the multilingual features are not apparent and you will not be aware of the presence (or absence) of translations of the LANSA Composer definitions for other languages. LANSA Composer only displays, prints and uses the translations that apply to the current language.
LANSA expects that most customer implementations would not require the multilingual support and would not enter translations in multiple languages in connection with their own customer-created definitions.
Deployment Considerations for Multilingual Definitions
If you do create translations in multiple languages for your own definitions, there are special considerations for deploying those definitions to other LANSA Composer installations.
LANSA Composer provides Export and Import features to support the deployment of LANSA Composer solutions from one LANSA Composer installation to another. For a fuller description of these features and considerations for their use, refer to:
Deploying Solutions for LANSA Composer
The standard Export and Import features will deploy the complete definitions of selected items in almost every respect. However, for the descriptions and notes, the standard deployment is limited to only the "base" language (as described above) and the translation for the current language, if present.
If translations for these items have been entered for other languages, they must be separately deployed using the procedure outlined below. This procedure is intended primarily for use by LANSA to create the deployment materials for definitions such as Activities that are supplied with LANSA Composer.
The procedure necessitates modifying the Windows registry on the computer that performs the Export. Such modifications should be performed with great care by suitable qualified individuals - incorrect Windows registry modifications can have serious consequences including rendering the computer inoperable.
1. On the source system:
a) Export the required definitions in the normal way
Descriptions and notes for the selected items will be exported for the "base" language and the current language, if present.
b) Edit the Windows registry to enable the feature
In the key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LANSA Composer\\\Settings
create a new string value with the name '' and set its value to ''.
c) Start the LANSA Composer client on a computer that is capable of supporting the character set used by the language whose translations you wish to export. For example, to export Japanese translations, you will typically have to perform the export on a Japanese language PC.
NOTE: Data corruption and/or program failure arising from encoding errors may arise if the exporting computer is not capable of correctly representing the characters used for the translation language being exported.
d) Select in the and begin by selecting the items whose translations you wish to export in the normal way. But then expand the item and select the language(s) for which you wish to export translations for the selected items.
e) Click the button and complete the export in the usual way.
Only the translations of the descriptions and notes for the selected items and languages will be exported. This export file does not contain the complete item definition - it can only be used to deploy the translations when the items already exist on the target system.
f) You may remove the registry entry above or set it to 'N' to disable the feature.
2. On the target system:
a) Load / import the item definitions using the export file created in step 1(a)
The import will completely replace the items on the target system if they already exist. This includes removing any existing translations of descriptions and notes. The import will load the "base" language descriptions and notes; it will also the load the "current" language translations, if the language is the same as the exporting system.
b) Start the LANSA Composer client on a computer that is capable of supporting the character set used by the language whose translations you wish to import. For example, to import Japanese translations, you will typically have to perform the import on a Japanese language PC.
NOTE: Data corruption and/or program failure arising from encoding errors may arise if the importing computer is not capable of correctly representing the characters used for the translation language being imported.
c) Load / import the item translations using the export file created in step 1(e)
The import will load translations only for items that already exist in the target system.