ASP Pages that Support Localization

The PT application includes two ASP pages; one to provide an entry point to the application and one to collect the localized HTML files for each screen as the user moves from one Web page to another. They are both named gate.asp, but they reside in different directories on the Web server and differ in the details of the tasks they perform.

Nonlocalized gate.asp

The nonlocalized gate.asp file is the entry point for the PT application. It is used only when users first access the application. Because the PT application is localized, it needs to identify a user's language preference when the user first logs on. It can then present information to the user in the language that most closely matches the user's language preference. To this end, code in nonlocalized gate.asp instantiates the Lingo component and calls its methods, which search the PT application's directory to locate folders with names that match the user's language preference. Nonlocalized gate.asp then directs the application to use the directory that contains the locale-specific *List.htm and *.htm files for the specified language. When the application cannot accommodate the language preference (no matching folder is found), the application defaults to U.S. English.

After users acquire a language context, they keep this context throughout their session in the PT application. For example, the application provides a user with a de-au (the German dialect that is used in Austria) language preference with the German context because de (German) is the closest match the PT application offers. During that user's session, the user interface will appear in German.

The nonlocalized gate.asp file resides in the "root" directory of the Web server where the PT application is installed. The following topics from Implementation further describe the code in nonlocalized gate.asp:

Localized gate.asp

The localized gate.asp file is called every time a user accesses a different PT application form view. Each language the PT application supports needs a localized version of gate.asp that resides in a language-specific folder. Nonlocalized gate.asp describes how the user's session acquires a language context. Because a localized gate.asp file applies only to one language, the code page can be specified. The localized gate.asp file captures the name of the folder, and from then on it directs the application to select *Logo.htm, *List.htm, and *.htm files from this specific folder. The menu.asp file also needs the folder name to choose the correct version of menu data.

Presenting PT Application Screens shows the layout of the application forms. Each form view consists of four separate frames:

The localized gate.asp file creates the framesets and frames on each form view and uses the src property for each frame in the window to specify the URL to be loaded by the frame. Because localized gate.asp provides access to any form view, the URL is assembled on the fly. The following topics from Implementation describe the code in localized gate.asp: