Building the PT Application Files

The PT application is designed to include XML templates for user interfaces for each supported language and a lingo.xml file that contains locale-specific strings for each user interface element. Because the PT application is a sample application designed to teach you how to use XML to localize user interfaces dynamically, the BackOffice Developer's Guide CD includes a directory containing the localized HTML user interface pages that result from building the application in each language it supports.

At design time, the developers create HTML files in the application's default language using the Web page design tool they choose. The application includes these HTML files in the Source directory. For more information, see Designing Nonlocalized XML Files.

After the HTML pages are complete, the developers load them into the HTML Data Refinery tool for conversion. The tool generates XML files that are then placed in the application's Global directory. These files serve as the globalized XML templates into which localized strings from the lingo.xml files are inserted when the user interface for each language is built. For more information about this process, see Merging XML Files Using the XML DOM.

Design-time work also includes building the lingo.xml files that contain localized strings for each language, and the XML and XSL files for application menus for each role a user can assume and each language the application supports. For more information, see About the Menu Subdirectories. The text for menu user interface elements—menu names and options—is localized outside the lingo.xml file because they are built using an XSL transformation that happens every time an application page is requested. Including the menu XML in the lingo.xml file required an inelegantly complicated design.

The application includes a set of localized HTML files for the application's default language—U.S. English. The developers built these files with the HTML Data Refinery tool, which calls into the Lingo COM component to initiate the merge of the globalized XML template files and the lingo.xml file for the default language. These HTML files reside in the En_us directory along with the U.S. English lingo.xml file and the Menu subdirectory.

After the application is deployed in the default language, a Build menu appears on the menu frame for users in the administrator role. The application presents as options on the Build menu the languages for which lingo.xml files and Menu subdirectories exist. Selecting a language from the Build menu calls the Lingo component to merge the globalized XML template files with the lingo.xml file for the selected language.