Pageflex Language Support


Pageflex Language Support

Localization
Localization is the process of adapting a software program or website to the language and currency of a particular region. The ability of an application to support multiple languages and currencies is actually a daunting task.  For instance, the CommerceTools application currently supports the following languages and currencies:
  1. English-US - US Dollar
  2. English-UK - United Kingdom Pound
  3. Chinese - China Yuan Renminbi
  4. Dutch - Euro
  5. French/Canada - Euro
  6. Portuguese - Brazil Real
  7. Spanish - Mexican Peso
  8. Germany - Euro
  9. Ireland-English UK - Euro

This is accomplished by storing every single instance of text on the site in a resource file.  These resource files are submitted to a company called Translations.com that specializes in translations. They meticulously translate every single word in those resource files and keep track of changes from one application release to the next. The end result is seamless localization by simply "flipping a switch," allowing users of those languages to read and check-out of the application in their local date formats and currencies.

The concept of localization, or language support, in Pageflex Studio is actually quite different.  Studio is a document creation application, meaning that the content is created by the user.  Under this concept, the document creator is responsible for the translation.  The responsibility of language support falls under the purview of the user.  Language support does two things: uses a language library to determine hyphenation rules and the language's character set to calculate dimensions for features like wrapping and copy fitting.  Essentially, as long as the chosen font supports the full character set of almost any language, the Studio application will render the text precisely.

Secondly, it's important to understand how a PC handles localization.  This is an important aspect of localization because a user must interact with Four51 within the rules set forth in their specific locale.  The important group set contains rules for keyboard layouts and fonts.  A Portuguese speaker uses a set of characters that may not exist as simple keys on an English speaker's keyboard.  Thus, your operating system must conform to the supported language and respond to the differences.  Your browser operates under these same rules, therefore when a Portuguese speaker is asked to input text into a field it is actually his operating system's localization rules that are governing the input, not the Four51 or Pageflex application. At no time is any attempt to translate the input performed by the Four51 or Pageflex application.  The applications ingest the input and render it to the printable document using the rules you define in the template.

Example Product 
To help visualize the localization abilities of Four51 and Pageflex, a project on the Advanced Technology demo site has been created that works with both Dutch and Portuguese.  The project demonstrates the support for both languages in one project so that you can see the independent nature of the language from the applications. The example company's locale is US-English, one template file is Portuguese and the other is Dutch. All three languages are working within the same context.  To view the project, visit the demo site and find the "Localization" product. To see the different languages, the proof and production outputs were setup to use different template files.  Proof renders the Dutch example, while Production renders the Portuguese example.  

Default values were also created for each language.  In English, the value reads, "Displayed as a label on the billing stage of the check-out process when Purchase Orders are allowed."  This is an actual value in our current resource files.  This sentence was selected because the hyphenation rules are enforced for each language. When rendering the example, you will see hyphens in the appropriate places (assuming Pageflex has provided accurate languages because we do not speak these languages).  Four51 used the font MetaBold-Roman for both languages. MetaBold-Roman is already installed on the Four51 servers.  This is an important note because the key to supporting character sets in other languages depends on the font.  The font you choose for your template must contain these characters or they will not render to the printable document.  In each template file we set the default language to the specific language.
The Four51 support team is frequently asked about the languages supported by Pageflex Studio and the OrderCloud application.  This concept can be confusing and this document is an attempt to bring some clarity.

Pageflex Studio Supported Languages 
Pageflex Studio fully supports all the languages in the Paragraph Properties language dropdown list, with two exceptions. "Full support" refers to composition, hyphenation and spell-checking. This applies to:
  1. Danish
  2. English-US, UK
  3. French
  4. German
  5. Italian
  6. Norwegian
  7. Portuguese
  8. Spanish
  9. Swedish
The two exceptions are Japanese and Chinese, which, though also fully composed, require no hyphenation or spell-checking. In addition, Pageflex can compose over 60 other languages and, as a general rule, these are languages that are read left to right and top to bottom.

There are some instances which Pageflex does not support hyphenation or ligatures.  Generally these are limited to languages that do not have hyphenation (Japanese, etc..), or more general languages that are read right-to-left (Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, etc..).

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Labels: Pageflex, Language