This article describes step-by-step how to get FlexStand to display menus, menus items, controls as well as LabVIEW user dialog boxes localized to Chinese (simplified), without the need for running native Chinese Windows.
Changes to the Windows Environment
To prepare your PC for this task the following steps are needed
Installing the Chinese language option
• From the Start menu, go to Settings>>Time and Language>> Language and click the Add a language button
• Select Chinese (Simplified, China) and click Next followed by Install. It may take a few minutes to complete the installation
Region Settings
• From the Start menu, go to Control Panel>> Clock and Region>>Region and select the
Administrative tab then click Change system locale…
• In the Current system locale: list, select Chinese (Simplified, China)
• Let the Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support checkbox unchecked
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Using Notepad++ with Correct Characters Encoding
Use Notepad++ to create and/or edit any *.ini file necessary to translate any FlexStand item to
Chinese. Notepad++ is a free software package (GNU) that can be downloaded from: https://notepadplus-plus.org/downloads/
Install the latest version.
When creating or editing a language *.ini file you must first select the correct encoding format.
• In the Notepad++ menu go to Encoding>>Character sets>>Chinese and select GB2312
(Simplified)
o You can verify the selected encoding format at any time in the Notepad++ status bar
(lower right corner)
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Creating or Editing INI Files
Custom localization files are to be located in an appropriate folder name (for example Chinese)
under: C:\Users\Public\Documents\National Instruments\TestStand 2016 (32-
bit)\Components\Language\
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Native TestStand Dialog Boxes
Translate the dialog tags in the appropriate TestStand INI file and category. For example, the login
dialog tags can be added as follow:
Resulting in the translation of the English dialog box to Chinese
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Custom TestStand Dialog (Message PopUp)
Message pop-ups in TestStand can be translated directly by letting the step expression find the tag
and message in the *.ini files. The following shows an example of pop-up message translated to Chinese.
The Message Expression searches for the My_First_TS_Dialog category and Start Fan and Reminder
tags in all *.ini files and displays the corresponding Chinese message. Likewise for the OK (Button 1)
button.
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FlexStand Menus and Menu Items
Likewise tags in appropriate initialization file categories are used to translate menu names and menu
items.
Note: As shown in the CIM-OI-Menu category above if you add for example ‘&F” after the translated
string for ‘File’ the classic shortcut Alt-F used to access the file menu will still work.
This leads to the following FLEXSTAND Operator Interface layout:
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Localizing LabVIEW Dialogs
You can use the TestStand – Get Resource String VI in the TestStand>>Localization LabVIEW palette to
extract the localized string from the INI files and pass it to the respective controls caption or value
property nodes. The following example shows the process for multiple strings when using the wrapper
VI Get Language Strings available in the Common Support packed library.
Note: For this example, the localized ‘Chinese string’ only consists of two Chinese characters meaning
‘Chinese language’ followed by the defaults English string. Part of the corresponding dialog appears as
follows: