by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/12/20 03:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/12/20/1328701.aspx
One of the big problems with presenting about locales, for example the updated ones in Vista, is that they can be hard to demo -- I mean, how can you show them all, or show what is in each one?
In many prior posts and in MSDN Magazine articles and presentations. I have been using a slightly modified version of Francois Liger's Culture Explorer sample (I did the minimal modifications to have Windows only cultures and custom cultures show up).
Thankfully, I can quit using my hacked up version, since Francois has updated his sample and Culture Explorer 2.0 is now available!
(24 downloads since the update went up this afternoon, let's see if we can bump that number up a bit!).
Now if a picture is worth 100 words, then this app is worth 1000 pictures. :-)
Whether one is looking at the way you can zoom on any text to help make the Lao text more legible:
or whether one is looking at the hilarious day and month names in the Valley Girl custom locale:
Or maybe at its number and currency info:
Maybe the Inuktitut day names will catch your fancy?
Though I am partial to the Mongolian month names, myself:
Whether one is staggered by the Oriya full date time pattern:
or the Uighur native currency name:
For some it will always be about the Klingon:
Though the fact that the About... button will get you the link to the email address of the guy who put this one together may be the coolest part for people who have even more suggestions for version 3.0!
Definitely worth picking up to see Vista's locale support in all its glory, as well as the .NET Framework's support of cultures, which is even more impressive on Vista....
Whether you want to admire the fascinating typography or the interesting way Francois added support for genitive dates or the source code so you can see how to do some of it yourself or whether you noticed the interesting bug hidden in the screenshots above that is either in Windows or the .NET Framework (though I am betting on Windows in this case and I'll explain why I think so before I even investigate the problem in a day or two!), there is something for everyone in here....
Enjoy!
This post brought to you by ᠱ (U+1831, a.k.a. MONGOLIAN LETTER SHA)
# Mihai on 20 Dec 2006 1:01 PM:
<<people who have even more suggestions for version 3.0>>
LOL :-)
I have bumped the download count, and I also have a suggestion: save the check-box settings between sessions.
It is nice to have the source code, I can do it myself, and use a hacked version before 3.0 (or 2.1, or 2.0 SP1, whatever) is released :-)
# Michael on 13 Apr 2008 4:05 PM:
Is Culture Explorer 2.0 still available anywhere? GotDotNet is gone now, and I can't find the app in the MSDN Code Gallery, CodePlex or anywhere else. Nothing new comes up in searches for the app, or for the author either. Sorry to ask here, but I can't find anything anywhere else, so I thought I'd at least ask.
thanks,
michael
# slyi on 8 Sep 2008 11:30 AM:
Site not available any longer but still available on archive.org
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