View source for Locale Support

== Obtaining localized information from the system ==

If you want to know how the date is displayed on the current system or how the names of the month are spelled in the currently selected language or what the currently selected language is at all at this time there is not well documented library that comes with ACP/MCP & eCS. LIBULS

This article is intended to give you a short introduction on the usage of that library.

in LIBULS there is a whole set of call that support codepage conversion and querying locale information.

This article will give a short quick and dirty sample on how to use it.

Reasons to use the LIBULS functions instead of querying enivronment:
* Normaly LANG will contain something usefull like: '''en_us''' or '''de_de''' from which you could parse a language. But '''LANG=myRealyLongStupidLocale''' is allowed as well, now you tell me which language this locale represents.
* Using the LIBULS allow you to acces not only language names, but a whole set of localized settings
* Using a country number will result in suplying several translations for the same language ( e.g. german is used in 041,049,043) where using the locale will return a common language for all of them : '''de'''


Now lets gets hands on with a sample, later I'll descibe what every line does here:

<pre>
01: #include <stdio.h>
02: #include <unidef.h>
03: 
04: int main(void)
05: {
06:    LocaleObject      locale_object = NULL;
07:    UniChar           *pinfo_item;
08:    int               rc = ULS_SUCCESS;
09: 
10: 
11:    rc = UniCreateLocaleObject(UNI_UCS_STRING_POINTER,
12:                                    (UniChar *)L"", &locale_object);
13:    if (rc != ULS_SUCCESS)
14:         {
15:            printf("UniCreateLocaleObject error: return code = %u\n", rc);
16:            return 1;
17:         }
18:          /* Query the Abriviated name of the current locale */
19:          rc = UniQueryLocaleItem(locale_object,
20:                                  LOCI_sLanguageID,
21:                                  &pinfo_item);
22:          if (rc != ULS_SUCCESS) {
23:            printf("UniQueryLocaleItem error: return code = %u\n", rc);
24:            return 1;
25:          }
26:          rc = UniFreeMem(pinfo_item);
27:          if (rc != ULS_SUCCESS) {
28:            printf("UniFreeMem error: return code = %u\n", rc);
29:            return 1;
30:          }
31: 
32:    printf("sLanguageID = %ls",pinfo_item);
33:    return(0);
34: }
</pre>

I'll leave out the obvious calls here, just the libuls Specific stuff:

Include the header which declares the functions and defines the constants for the locale Items.
<pre>
02: #include <unidef.h>
</pre>


Declare variables for the API's
<pre>
06:    LocaleObject      locale_object = NULL;
07:    UniChar           *pinfo_item;
</pre>

Now create the locale_object, note that the second parameter, '''(UniChar *)L""''', a blank locale, will cause to use the locale specified in the '''LANG''' environment.
<pre>
11:    rc = UniCreateLocaleObject(UNI_UCS_STRING_POINTER,
12:                                    (UniChar *)L"", &locale_object);
</pre>