Details
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Improvement
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Minor
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None
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None
Description
ReactOS should separate language-dependent resources (e.g. translations) into their own files instead of compiling them all into the binary (exe, dll) directly.
Doing this has the following advantages:
- Only the needed language resources will need to be installed, thus reducing disk usage. Though this may not be significant currently, it will matter when ReactOS gets bigger.
- Translations can be updated without having to update the binary itself. This too, may not be significant before the implementation of an automatic update system.
There are a few possible ways of doing this that I can think of:
1. Follow how Windows Vista and later does by using Win32 PE-formatted MUI resource modules. I think Windows XP SP3 also partially support MUI resources but I can't find sources on this.
2. Use external non-Win32 PE-formatted files in a custom format (e.g. text files) to store translations and provide ReactOS-specific libraries for loading them.
3. Use `gettext`.
Option 1 probably make most sense for ReactOS since it is fully Windows-compatible.