MULTILINGUAL COMPONENTS FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT PROVIDING LOCALE SENSITIVE AND CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE PRESENTATION OF DATA

摘要

Multilingual components support both development and dynamic runtime selection of locales to automatically update the language and formatting requirements of presented or stored data. Each multilingual component stores information identifying a plurality of different locales that are supported by the multilingual component. During development, the applications developer selects a set of the locales that are to be supported at runtime by the multilingual component, and defines additional user interface and behavioral properties. The developer further specifies an initial one of the locales as the locale which defines the language and presentation formatting requirements for presenting data within the multilingual component. During runtime the developer selected locale is used to present user input (or statically defined) data in the language and format of the locale. If enabled, the user can select a different one of the supported locales, in which case the multilingual component automatically changes the language and formatting of the presented or stored data to that of the user selected locale. The multilingual components include various implementations, including visual components, such as a calendar, a date/time display, a numeric display, an edit display, and a currency display. Non-visual components include a locale component which stores language and formatting parameters for one or more locales, and a text string manipulation control.