hope this is the right category...

i'm trying to develop a multilingual solution. my plan is to have an extra file which holds the various translations. there would be a global field with a current language ID. proper alert boxes with the ShowMessage command can be displayed by checking for the ID.

field labels and buttons are a bit trickier. i was thinking of having one record per item, with one field per language, plus an additional global field. during an initialization script, the global fields get stuffed with the proper language items, so they can be displayed in the other files.

my worries are that this will lead to severe slowdown on a network or even a local file, when a layout displays perhaps a few dozen buttons and field labels which are pulled from globals in another file. has anyone tried this before or has a better idea of how to do this?

I'd keep the idea with the dialog boxes, or if you feeling spiffy, you can make mock dialog boxes in a layout.

In terms of field labels etc, it'd go for muilt-layouts. Have one layout per.

that said, I've never done anything multilingual...

To pull graphic through network will be the same for direct graphic from used file or from related file through relation. In any case I do recommend only FileMaker own vector graphic.

I have just done this with a solution that I sell. You can see the results by downloading the demo or if you'd rather I can send you the filemaker files. I haven't done the dialog boxes yet but the layouts can currently toggle between two different languages.

I use merge fields for all the field labels and it works pretty well. I'll work on the dialog boxes next.

The solution is Computer Admin Pro

<http://www.computeradminpro.com>

When you run the solution there is a field in the upper left corner of the login screen that says "English", select "Spanish" to toggle to Spanish.

Let me know what you think!

Regards,

Thomas