Recently I was asked by some fellows some help to make a new
version of their VB6 application in Spanish, but at the end we end up migrating
the application to VB.Net and taking advantage of the .NET internationalization
features.
VB6 did not provided and out-of-box support for multiple
cultures, but the .NET framework provides the developer with utilities to
create applications that allow users in multiple regions use their applications
according to their “Culture”.
The .Net Framework is able to handle different cultures.
These “cultures” are used to localize certain aspects of the application for
particular geographic zones.
When an application is not created with any cultural
considerations it is said to use a Neutral
Culture. It implies that independent of the machine configuration it will
behave and display components in the same way.
The Culture is assigned automactically using the machine
settings or it can be altered programmatically. You can use the property
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture for that purpose.
Cultures have two elements: language and region. For example
for Argentina where Spanish
is spoken la culture will be es-AR (es is for Spanish: ESpañol and AR for Argentina)
If no information is found at all for an language then the
neutral culture is used.
The information for user display is handler in assemblies
usually called “satellite assemblies” which are loaded depending on the culture
of the environment where the application is executed.