I have written an application which is supposed to run in 5 languages – English, French, Spanish, Russian and Chinese.
I have stored all of the language strings in an Access table and wherever a string is needed, I search for the number associated with that string and fill the control with the necessary text.
The program starts in English, but the user then has the option to switch to the language of his/her choice. When Russian is chosen, the text has to change to Cyrillic (CharSet 204).
I have been using an Access 97 database and have got every control working in any language, including Title Bars, Tooltips and Message boxes. However, two controls are not able to display Cyrillic text, i.e. the DBGrid and Data Dynamics ActiveReports, a reporting active-x component. I have been in touch with Data Dynamics, and after much correspondence, we discovered that if I translate the data into an Access 2000 database, the DBGrid and ActiveReports are able to display the Cyrillic text,but all of the other controls cannot. The odd thing is that if I am trying to read the Access 97 database, an individual cell in the DBGrid does show Cyrillic text only if it has the focus. When it loses the focus, the text becomes unreadable again.
Using a test program with a TextBox and DBGrid on the same form, if I am trying to read the Access 2000 database, the DBGrid shows Cyrillic text, but the TextBox doesn’t. However, if I then type some Russian text directly into the TextBox, the TextBox looks OK, but the corresponding cell in the DBGrid becomes unreadable again, unless it has the focus.