Multilingual Applications in .NET

I am a newbie for C#, although I have several years of experience with OOP.

For a project in the design phase, I was chosen to find out how multilinguality can be done under C#. For the project, I am currently using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express...

What I have done till now

I read about several articles on this subject, like System.Resources FAQ, Multilingual Applications in .NET or C# multilingual support, but still have problems getting my demo to run.

My demo 开发者_JS百科worked without resource files with hard-coded text for all cultures (ar-SA, en-UK, de-DE, no, sv-SE, and tr). I run into problems when I tried it with resource files.

How I tried to solve it

To solve it, I created a resource file for each culture, called Resource..resx. All the tutorials were not written for MS VS 2010, so there was no information about the combo box on the resources, which I had left at default ("no code generation") instead of "Internal". :-(

Now, I have the resource files for the six languages:

Resource.ar-SA.resx
Resource.de-DE.resx
etc.

I determined the IDE-generated *.resources files and and determine the path for each of it according to the selected language.

When I run the code, I get stuck with the message

MainWindow:DetermineResourceManager(): Exception: System.BadImageFormatException: Im Modul wurde ein Assemblymanifest erwartet. (Ausnahme von HRESULT: 0x80131018)
   bei System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.nLoadFile(String path, Evidence evidence)
   bei System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile(String path)
   bei WpfApplication1.MainWindow.DetermineResourceManager() in C:\Documents and Settings\z002zatp\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\WpfApplication1\WpfApplication1\MainWindow.xaml.cs:Zeile 136.

So, a so-called assembly manifest is missing.

My question

What have I to do let the IDE create the assembly manifest properly?

The code

The problematic line is marked below. I checked and found out that the files at C:\Documents and Settings\z002zatp\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\WpfApplication1\WpfApplication1\obj\x86\Debug do exist.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Data;
using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Input;
using System.Windows.Media;
using System.Windows.Media.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using System.Windows.Shapes;

using System.Globalization; // class CultureInfo
using System.Resources;     // class Thread
using System.Threading;     // 

namespace WpfApplication1
{
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        static string[,] culture = new string[,] { { "ar-SA", "Arabic", "Saudi Arabia" }, { "de-DE", "German", "Germany" },
                                               { "en-UK", "English", "United Kingdom"}, // { "en-US", "English", "United States of America"}, 
                                               { "no", "Norwegian (Bokmål)", "Norway"}, { "sv-SE", "Swedish", "Sweden"},
                                               { "tr", "Turkish", null } };
        static string[] label = new string[] { "Caption", "Message" };

        static short selectedCulture = 1;   // de-DE
        ResourceManager rm = null;

        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            textBox1.AppendText(culture[selectedCulture, 1]);
            Keyboard.Focus(btnMessage);
        }

        private void btnMessage_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs rea)
        {
            const string METHOD = "MainWindow:btnMessage_Click: ";

            try
            {
                DetermineResourceManager();

                MessageBox.Show(rm.GetString(label[1]), rm.GetString(label[0]),
                    MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.None, MessageBoxResult.None);
            }
            catch (MissingManifestResourceException mmre)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(METHOD + "Exception: " + mmre, "Error");
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(METHOD + "Unexpected exception: " + e, "Error");
            }

            SwitchLanguage();
            textBox1.Text = culture[selectedCulture, 1];
        }

        private void DetermineResourceManager()
        {
            const string METHOD = "MainWindow:DetermineResourceManager(): ";
            string path = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\z002zatp\\My Documents\\Visual Studio 2010\\Projects\\" +
                "WpfApplication1\\WpfApplication1\\obj\\x86\\Debug\\";
            string resource = "WpfApplication1.Resource." + culture[selectedCulture, 0] + ".resources"; 

            System.Reflection.Assembly assembly = null;
            //MessageBox.Show(METHOD + "Resource to be loaded: " + path + resource);

            try
            {
   >>>          assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFile(path + resource);  <<< ERROR OCCURS HERE

                CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo(culture[selectedCulture, 0]);

                Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;

                rm = new ResourceManager(resource, assembly);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(METHOD + "Exception: " + e);
                throw e;
            }
        }

        private void SwitchLanguage()
        {
            if (++selectedCulture >= culture.Length/3)
                selectedCulture = 0;
        }
    }
}

Here is the solution for my question I reached after help from another site:

        /// <summary>
    /// Interaktionslogik für MainWindow.xaml
    /// </summary>
    /// 

    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        static string[,] culture = new string[,] { { "ar-SA", "Arabic", "Saudi Arabia" }, { "de-DE", "German", "Germany" },
                                                   { "en-GB", "English", "United Kingdom"}, // { "en-US", "English", "United States of America"}, 
                                                   { "no", "Norwegian (Bokmål)", "Norway"}, { "sv-SE", "Swedish", "Sweden"},
                                                   { "tr", "Turkish", null } };
        static string[] label = new string[] { "Caption", "Message" };

        static short selectedCulture = 1;   // de-DE
        ResourceManager rm = null;

        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            textBox1.AppendText(culture[selectedCulture, 1]);
            Keyboard.Focus(btnMessage);
        }

        private void btnMessage_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs rea)
        {
            const string METHOD = "MainWindow:btnMessage_Click: ";

            try
            {
                DetermineResourceManager();

                if (culture[selectedCulture, 0].Substring(0, 2) != "ar")
                {
                    MessageBox.Show(rm.GetString(label[1]), rm.GetString(label[0]),
                        MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.None, MessageBoxResult.None);
                }
                else
                {
                    MessageBox.Show(rm.GetString(label[1]), rm.GetString(label[0]),
                        MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.None, MessageBoxResult.None,
                        MessageBoxOptions.RightAlign | MessageBoxOptions.RtlReading);
                }
            }
            catch (MissingManifestResourceException mmre)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(METHOD + "Exception: " + mmre, "Error");
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(METHOD + "Unexpected exception: " + e, "Error");
            }

            SwitchLanguage();
            textBox1.Text = culture[selectedCulture, 1];
        }

        private void DetermineResourceManager()
        {
            const string METHOD = "MainWindow:DetermineResourceManager(): ";

            string resource = "WpfApplication1.Resource." + culture[selectedCulture, 0] + ".resources";

            try
            {
                Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(culture[selectedCulture, 0], false);

                rm = new ResourceManager("WpfApplication1.Resource", Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly());
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(METHOD + ", unexpected exception: " + e);
                throw e;
            }
        }

        private void SwitchLanguage()
        {
            if (++selectedCulture >= culture.Length/3)
                selectedCulture = 0;
        }
    }
}

Take a look at these articles:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y99d1cd3(v=VS.100).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y99d1cd3(v=VS.90).aspx

...and some examples:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718334.aspx