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wghayes

Custom Language and strings.dbf, strings,cdx

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I have a custom language, Cdrom, that I created from Standard English, allowing me considerable freedom in default sentence structure, etc. This is working well, but with all the other languages in strings.dbf, these two files have become very large.

 

Since I have no need for Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, etc. I wonder if anyone has a method of streamlining this dbf file to just the language(s) that are required. I presume that the cdx index file can be deleted and will be reconstructed automatically.

 

It would also be nice if TMG allowed one to place these files somewhere other than in the program folder. I would suggest another entry in Preferences >> Options >> Current Project Options >> Advanced, or somewhere under Program Options. This would make it easier to back up these two files, make it simple to include them when moving a project from desktop to laptop, and help prevent accidental overwriting of strings.dbf when installing an upgrade.

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If I understand correctly, you have created a custom language only in order to create special sentences in that language. And you have not made any translations from the File > Language >Customize menu. Is that right?

 

If so, there is no need to backup the strings.dbf file at all. All the sentence information is stored in the Project files, not in string.dbf. All the entry in strings.dbf does for you is enable you to access sentences in that language. In effect, the only useful information is the name of the custom language.

 

So, should you lose strings.dbf, you can regain total access by simply re-creating the language again from the File >Languages menu, just being careful to spell it the same way. Until you do, all your sentence information is safe in your Project files.

 

If, on the other hand, I misunderstand and you have in fact created custom translations, the story is quite different. <_>

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If I understand correctly, you have created a custom language only in order to create special sentences in that language. And you have not made any translations from the File > Language >Customize menu. Is that right? . . .

Terry -

 

Thanks for your reply and the nice tutorial. When I did this more than two years ago, I was under the impression that I had to make a copy of the English (U.S.) language, then rename the copy as my custom language before using and changing it. So I did that and was thereafter under the mistaken impression that all of my changes in sentence structure were saved in the strings.dbf file.

 

You are correct - I have no need to change the labels on the interface or to change the articles, pronouns, etc. in the reports. I am only changing the default sentence structure.

 

I just took a closer look at File >> Language >> Customize and found that I could simply delete the languages I do not want (French, German, Italian, etc, etc.). Doing so reduced the size of strings.dbf by over 50%. I have now saved the smaller file to my backup disk where it will be available should I ever need it. Nice to know that it need not be backed up periodically.

 

Thanks again -

 

Bill Hayes

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