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Visual Basic 6.0 Internationalization Programming
Programming for Globalization

If you want to create a internationalized application by Visual Basic 6.0, the following points need to be covered.

1. String And Date Functions
   • String and date functions listed below are affected by system locale setting, so you should not use some specific format.
     

     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Functions                      Process  
     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     StrComp                        String Comparison
     StrConv                        String Conversion
     InStrRev, StrReverse           String Reverse
     Format, LCase, UCase           String Uppper/Lower Case
     Space, StrDup                  String Repeat
     Len                            String Length
     Format, FormatCurrency,        String Formatting
     FormatDateTime, FormatNumber, 
     FormatPercent
     InStr, Left, LTrim, Mid,       String Operation
     Right, RTrim, Trim              
     Asc, AscW, Chr, ChrW           ASCII/ANSI Operation
     Replace                        String Replacement
     Filter                         Srring Array
     Split, Join                    String Part or Array
     
     Date, Time                     Get system timestamp
     DateSerial                     Convert year, month, day to Date type
     DateValue                      Convert date string to Date type
     TimeValue                      Convert time string to Date type
     CDate                          Convert date and time string to Date type
     IsDate                         Check if string is valid for date or time
     

     For the function Format, to use the following defined or control panel based formats are recommended.
     

     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Format Name                    Description
     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     -- Defined --
     General Date, G                Date or time, or both on the current culture
     Long Date, Medium Date, D      Long format of date on the current culture
     Short Date, d                  Short format of date on the current culture
     Long Time, Medium Time, T      Long format of time on the current culture
     Short Time, t                  Short format of time on the current culture
     R, r                           GMT format
     u                              GMT index format
     U                              GMT long format
     Currency, C, c                 Number with delimiters based on system locale
     
     -- Control Panel Based --
     ddddd                          Short string of year, month, day set by control panel
     dddddd                         Long string of year, month, day set by control panel
     ttttt                          Time string set by control panel           
     

     e.g.)
     Format(Now, "Long Date")
     Format(1000, "Currency")
     Format(Now, "ddddd")
     

2. Output Encoding
   • Visual Basic outputs string data in each Windows code page, so some language strings cannot be shown correctly in other language setting platforms. (e.g. Visual Basic applications compiled in Japanese Windows show incorrect Japanese characters in English Windows.)
     This is because Visual Basic standard ocx has non-Unicode satellite dlls replaced with each code page one (this means those applications cannot be Unicode ones).
     To solve this problem, Microsoft is providing International Package and Deployment Kit (IPDK).
     You can refer to and download IPDK from MSDN site.
     
     
3. Option Compare Statement
   • Visual Basic 6.0 compares strings (characters) with operators "<", ">", "="... or "Like".
     It doesn't have the comaring functions like other languages (e.g. Java).
     This comparison gets affected by Option Compare Statement.
     About character comparison, see the Character Comparison.
     
     
4. Resource Loading
   • Visual Basic 6.0 has the function "LoadResString" to load stings in .res files, but to swtich and load the resource dlls dynamically to the current locale, you have to call some Windows API in the same way as Windows API Internationalization Programming by Visual C++.
     About resource loading, see the next page Resources.
     

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