[Mono-list] About Format Function (VB.NET)

[Miguel de Icaza]

hello!

>  Currently, i'm developing code into Microsoft.VisualBasic
> (FileSystem.cs and Strings.cs). Just now i am writing some code to
> "unstub" the Format function from Strings.cs. I've found a problem in
> which I don't know what to do: 
>  
>   Format has two parameters : first, the object that you want to format
> (numbers,dates, etc), and second (style) an string explaining the format
> (for instance,Format(5,"00") will return the string "05". Well, one of
> the "styles" is "On/Off". MSDN library says that it returns the string
> "Off" if a number is equals to zero,and "On" if  the number is not equal
> to zero. 
>  
>   I've been testing it using Microsoft .NET, and to my surprise, in my
> spanish  windows box, it returns "Activado" (that means "On" in
> Spanish") and "Desactivado"  ("Off", in spanish).MSDN doesn't say any
> more about this. 
>  
>  I've been looking into System.Globalization, cause I thought there
> could be something like an universal symbol to translate "On" and "Off",
> but I didn't find anything. 
>  
>  I think this "multilanguage implementation" can be a real problem for a
> developer,  for instance : 
>  
>   An Spanish developer writes something like : 
>  
>   if ( Format(myvar,"On/Off" == "Activado" ) 
>   { 
>   	... 
>   } 

My take is that they intended Format strings to be used for user
consumption, and not something that the program would have to
parse/consume.  

For now you can just use On/Off, and later, when we do a pass for
localization, the strings will be translated appropriately.

Every other internationalized application has this issue ;-)

Miguel