Magik Localization and Globization

Smallworld has a very robust localization system. Though, the more robust things are the more difficult they are to utilized. Here are some examples and tips to help you.

Date/Time

For you to show the date and time based on your location, you need to do the following…

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• Timezone - you can set the environment to the timezone you want to be shown. One way this can be done is thru the use of the SW_TZ environment for example: SW_TZ=US/Eastern. Typically set in the gis_aliases, or some other pre-start environment set up script. The values can be any file that is located in the product\data\zoneinfo directory. There is an alias file that also contains valid settings.
• If you are from the US you want to see the month/day/year format and 12 hour am/pm clock. This done by copying the date_time.msg from product\modules\sw_core\core_resources\resources\en_gb\messages\date_time.msg to a module that is loaded for your your application. I put it under the application module itself. under resources.en_us/messages. You need to change the en_gb to en_us or just remove en_gb in the file and change the date and time strings to what you want.
• you will want to add the following to your build script date_time_environ.dst_rules_name«"localtime" this will update the environment data based on the local information (timezone and language)
• Further help can be sought under the main HTMLHELP->User Environmnet->Regional Settings->Globalisation overview and under Application Development->Application Development Techniques->Dates and times (Sections 5.2 and 5.3)

Messages

In 4.0 (or 3.3?) a new message handler scheme was put in place. In order to inherit messages from common message information you need to use one of the following:

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[[code]]
message_handler(:fcsi_gui).add_use(:gen_graphics)
message_handler(:fcsi_gui).add_uses(:gen_graphics,:fcsi_gen)
message_handler(:fcsi_gui).set_uses_list({:gen_graphics})
[[/code]