What you send to the translators doesn't necessarily have to be what you compile into resource files, so do whatever makes it easier. Since they are XML files (and you can also use plain text files using key=value pairs, but then you can only localize strings and not any Type that is attrbuted with a specific TypeConverter), you can do just about whatever you want. When you compile the resource files, however, they must be compiled into separate satellite assemblies. These satellite assemblies are identified by a specific culture. Take a fully-qualified assembly name:
System, culture=neutral, version=1.0.5000.0, publicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
Notice the neutral? Primary assemblies (those assemblies that contain the IL module(s)) must always be neutral (but can contain your neutral language, which is why I mentioned using the assembly-level attribute NeutralResourcesLanguageAttribute for faster look-ups). Satellite assemblies replace "neutral" with whatever locale/language for which they were compiled. Both the ResourceManager and the ComponentResourceManager (which extends the former) look-up resources in satellite assemblies using this information. You could create your own resource manager classes to look for resources in a single assembly, but there's so many problems with that. It's inflexible and bloats the size of your assemblies when N-1..3 languages are necessary for any particular user (1..3 denotes cases when have locale-specific resources, which fallback to language-specific resources, which fallback to neutral resources). You also loose the ability to integrate with visual designers, unless you plan on implementing your own plugins for each designer instead of making the designers work for you (which is how the ComponentModel currently works). Be sure to read-up on the classes I've mentioned as well as the links I gave you. It explains a lot of information. Just going through an example of localizing a simple sample application and examining the code really helps, too. Create a new project, throw some controls on the form, assign some text, then localize it using the steps I've mentioned. Examine the source, compile the project, and examine the output. You can learn a lot from such an example. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Software Design Engineer Developer Division Sustained Engineering Microsoft
