Will English script instructions work in the French version ?

[JohnnyDee]

Hello World (of filemaker users and developers!),

 

We have been using filemaker for years where I work.  Recently, I've been handed a simple assignment for a database app.  Problem is this:  At work, filemaker 12.04pro (+ server somewhere LOL) and everything else is in the french language.  At home I use the english install of filemaker and develop my stuff in english.  I've noticed a peculiarity with this platform, that is; the scripting language is the same as in the application's installed language, which is very foreign to me!! In other programming platforms, the instructions & code are pretty much always in english even if your screens will display & handle data in another language

 

So my question is, will my scripts that are written in english port over to the french version, or will I have to rewrite all of my scripts in french?

 

 

Thank you

 

 

 

 

[Matthew F]

Hi Johnny.  Welcome to FM Forums. 

 

Why not make a test databases on your English app, and then view it on the French app and see what language the script appears?  (Then you can report back and let us know) 

 

I've seen files posted in this forum by Filemaker users in France, and their scripts appeared in English when opened in my U.S. localized app, so I suppose it works the same going from English to French.   

 

I imagine that the Filemaker software is localized at the time of installation, but there is no difference in the format of the data files themselves. The scripts are probably displayed according to the localization of the FM Pro software that you are using. 

[JohnnyDee]

Hi Matthew,

 

Thanks for the quick reply.  Its a bit late for a test DB, I'll take the whole project built at home to work tomorrow morning, then I'll see if it works haha.  I hope it does, its a nightmare to rewrite the scripts and while such things as "If, Elseif and Loop" are pretty easy to translate, some of the more arcane stuff iisn't - I've had to do this once or twice but back then I had taken screen shots of my english scripts (they were short enough) and just rewrote them in french and boy did I have a hard time finding the equivalent words! 

 

I'll keep you all posted as to the results.

 

John

[normanicus]

My memory of the French version if from a long way back but I think the separators are different in calculations i.e. not semi-colons. Also, the thousands separator is a comma, not a full stop. The latter may be in the presentation of the number rather than stored.

 

However, post a question here:

 

http://www.fmsource.com/

 

I'm pretty sure you will get a reply to a post in English.

 

Otherwise:

 

Pouvez-vous me dire s'il y a une façon de traduire une base FMP(xx) écrit en anglais vers le français.

 

Sinon, quelles sont les astuces et ressources qui pourraient simplifier la tâche ?

[JohnnyDee]

MYSTERY SOLVED!!

 

Hello Everyone,

 

Well, all the scripts written on the english platform translated 100% correrctly to french, so one can indeed "code" in one language and have the translation execute on an installation in a different language.  Hats off to the developers on this one, having gone through all the trouble of having a "front end" language then an internal engine  interpreting the actual instructions the machine can understand.

 

So, thank you all who took the time to formulate ideas and reply.

 

For "Normanicus" above:  I absolutely hate the comma used as the decimal point in french; you then have to use 2 hands to enter data!!  I was sooo pissed off about this that years ago I wrote an AutoHotkey script that detects when the focus window is FileMaker, it then remaps the numpad decimal key to a comma!!

 

Cheers!

 

John

[webko]

I think that the script steps themselves have a unique internal FileMaker ID that maps to the correct script step - so the display can be localised easily...

 

Or at least, that has been my impression over the years

 

Cheers

 

Webko

[Matthew F]

 

 

I think that the script steps themselves have a unique internal FileMaker ID that maps to the correct script step

I'm sure you're right.  It would also make the files more compact.  That's why we manipulate scripts in the "Script Manager", not as raw text. 

[Helpful Harry]

Many high level programming languages store the code as some sort of tokenised format. It's probably the same with the Field names, which is why you can change the name of one and it automatically gets fixed everywhere it's used. Same with Calculation Functions too.

The Script

"Set Field [MyField;"1"]

is probably stored within FileMaker as something like*

SC5 FN2 1

(i.e. ScriptCommand 5 FieldName 2 DataValue 1)

As well as saving file space, the actual language being used is then irrelevant, as would be changes between versions of FileMaker where command names have changed (e.g. Status - > Get).

* I'm not saying that is how FileMaker actually stores it, but it is simply an example of tokenising.