ArcGIS Engine Developer Guide

.NET APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE
into satellite assemblies (using the naming convention .resources.dll) and placed in subdirectories of the main build directory.
The subdirectories are named after the culture of the satellite assembly they
contain. For example, Swiss–French resources would be contained in a fr-CH
subdirectory.
When an application runs, it automatically uses the resources contained in the
satellite assembly with the appropriate culture. The appropriate culture is determined
from the Windows settings. If a satellite assembly for the appropriate
culture cannot be found, the default resources (those embedded in the main
assembly) will be used instead.
The following sections give more information on creating your own .resx and
.resources files.
Embedding a default .resources file in your project
1. Right-click the project name in the Solution Explorer, click Add, then click
Add Existing Item to navigate to your .resx or .resources file.
2. In the Solution Explorer, choose the file you just added and press F4 to
display its properties.
3. Set the Build Action property to Embedded Resource.
This will ensure that your application always has a set of resources to fall back
on if there isn’t a resource DLL for the culture your application runs in.
The Visual Basic .NET and C# flavors of the Pan
Tool developer sample illustrate how to localize
resources for German language environments.
The sample can be found in the Developer
Samples\ArcMap\Commands and Tools\Pan Tool
folder. Strictly speaking, the sample only requires
localized strings, but the images have been
changed for the “de” culture as well, to serve as
illustration.
Creating .resources.dll files for cultures supported by your project
1. First, ensure you have a default .resx or .resources file in your project.
2. Take the default .resx or .resources file and create a separate localized file for
each culture you want to support.
• Each file should contain resources with the same Names; the Value of each
resource in the file should contain the localized value.
• Localized resource files should be named according to their culture, for
example, ..resx or
..resources.
3. Add the new resource files to the project, ensuring each one has its Build
Action set to Embedded Resource.
4. Build the project.
The compiler and linker will create a separate satellite assembly for each
culture. The satellite assemblies will be placed in subdirectories under the
directory holding your main assembly. The subdirectories will be named by
culture, allowing the .NET runtime to locate the resources appropriate to the
culture in which the application runs.
The main (default) resources file will be embedded in the main assembly.
A batch file named buildResources.bat has been
provided in the Pan Tool sample to create the
default .resources files and the culture-specific
satellite assemblies.
Chapter 4 • Developer environments • 165