Language independant AutoIt examples

[water]

I had a look at the _ExcelNumberFormat example to remove a bug (#2244) and noticed that the example didn't work on my german Office installation.

Should the AutoIt examples be written language independant so they work out of the box on every system?

Edited September 9, 2012 by water

[GEOSoft]

IMHO; language independence would be preferable but I guess that is up to the Devs.

[water]

If language independance is a must have, then I would look for a solution that works with Excel and remove the bug and add some language code to the example.

If it is just a nice to have, then I would only remove the bug for the time being.

[trancexx]

You are talking about the color? If yes then replace "Red" with "Color 1-56" equivalent.

Edit: Or is that "Farbe" then?

If yes then do whatever you think it's smart.

Edited September 2, 2012 by trancexx

[water]

The example script uses $aFormatExamples[1] to $aFormatExamples[4] to format columns in Excel:

$aFormatExamples[5] = ["Format Examples", "General", "hh:mm:ss", "$#,##0.00", "[Red]($#,##0.00)"]

This is fine for systems with an english locale. For my german system this should be:

$aFormatExamples[5] = ["Format Examples", "Standard", "hh:mm:ss", "€#.##0,00", "[Rot](€#.##0,00)"]

What to do depends what the Devs intend with the example scripts.

If the examples should run on every system and return the desired result then some additional code might be needed to retrieve the correct settings.

If only english systems should be supported then the example scripts should check the locale and return a message that the results might be unexpected.

And the UDF function _ExcelNumberFormat should at least return an error if an invalid format is passed - which it doesn't do at the moment.

Edited September 2, 2012 by water

[trancexx]

Of course that @error should be set if function fails.

"dollar" to "euro" doesn't need corrected because there is nothing wrong with dollar format.

[Valik]

Err, why would you want to complicate an example by getting the correct currency format? Is that the example? No? Then why the fuck should the example contain it?

Examples should work in language neutral ways. If you find that in order to do that you need to add a bunch of extra code... re-think the example.

[water]

IMHO the function should be renamed to _ExcelCellFormat because it not only formats numbers (but this would break compatibility so I think we'll have to live with the name).

Formatting numbers is language dependant (comma versus dot as decimal symbol and digit grouping symbol etc.). But it would need too much extra code to make the example language independant.

Hence I just added some error checking to display a MsgBox if the formatting string is invalid and added a remark to the UDF that the results might be invalid if a non english system is used.

[Myicq]

Making code for excel language independent is really a nightmare, since native excel files can't even safely transfer from one region to another.

EDIT: This is actually not true (anymore). Excel formulas in xmlx format are stored in English format, as per my second link below. And apparently formulas in VBA works in en-US all the time, while the normal GUI works localized. Yet in version 2010 the VBA depends on the culture selected vs culture installed. So it's a complex topic with many aspecs and facets. Sorry for not checking up on this first time.. (but wondering what f.ex Excel in Arab or Hebrew may be like ? VBA r2l ?)

Formulas are localized, as are certain enumerations (like OP indicates).

There is a nice reference here

Some discussion of the matter here

Much about color in Excel

Seems like instead of "[Red]" you can use color index like "[Color45]". Although then I am not sure if that would be "[Farbe45]" in deDE version..

Edited September 13, 2012 by Myicq

[water]

Thanks a lot for this information. Explains a lot.

I think I will only create examples for english systems because the help file where the examples are embedded is written in english too.

Where there might be differences with other languages or even errors a message will inform the user.

Maybe I will even check the UI language and send a warning message to the user. Will have to think about this.