Change Language when designing

Introduction

Hello and welcome to a new guide on how to best use Movicon.NExT™.

In this technote we are going to show you how to change the language with which the project’s texts are displayed in the Movicon.NExT editor in design mode.

Changing language when editing

Movicon.NExT offers the possibility to display the project’s texts directly in the editor while in design mode so that you can preview how the application will look in multi-languages before running it.
Infact, when you open a screen after having configured the languages and translated the texts manually or automaticaly in the String Resource, you will see a combo-box at the bottom of the workspace corresponding to the language strings: when you select one of the languages listed in the combo-box, the screen will show its texts in the language you have selected.
Now, we will show you how to achieve this in the following example.

Example

In this example, we will create a screen with text that can be translated into different languages. Subsequently, the language can be changed in design mode by using a combo-box within the screen’s workspace.
Start the Movicon.NExT platform up in design mode and create, or load, a project.

Creating a screen

First create a screen in this way:

• Go to the project tree in the Project Explorer window and select the Screen module.
• Right-click it and select the New option from the menu that appears.
• A popup will show allowing you to configure the screen’s general properties. Configure the screen as follows:
• • Width: 1920
  • Height: 1080
  • Name: Main
• Click the OK button to confirm.

Making sure that the Main screen is open, click on the Toolbox on the editor’s far right next to the properties window, to open the Toolbox library offered by Movicon.NExT.
Select the Text Box object from the Texts folder and drag and drop it on the screen. Select the object, open its properties window, then go to the Text property and insert the “Home” string.

Configuring the languages

Now, we shall configure the languages and translations of the text associated to the graphical object.
Double-click on String Resource located in the project tree to open it.
After the Texts table has opened add two languages, for example English (United States) and Italian, in this way:

• Right-click on the workspace within the String Resource and select the Add New Language from the menu that appears.
• Select the English (United States) language from the popup and click OK to confirm.
• Repeat this procedure but this time select the Italian language.

Once both languages have been added, you can import the project strings by clicking the Import Strings button on the Movicon.NExT editor’s toolbar, or by selecting the Add String ID option from the Options menu.
When the project’s texts have been imported, check that the Enable Auto Translate option is deactivated in the contextual menu.
Now insert the “Home” string in the column that corresponds to the English (United States) language, and the “Casa” string in the column that corresponds to the Italian language.

Save the project by clicking on the Save All icon on the Movicon.NExT editor’s Toolbar and return to the Main screen in edit mode.

Test

Changed the language displayed by using the combo-box to select the en-US and then the it-IT option. By doing this, the texts configured in the String Resource table will be displayed in the selected language in design mode.