What is the best way to load a locale-specific (i.e. translated) compiled help file (.chm)? Our install will deploy them alongside the satellite assemblies containing resources. I'd like to re-use the same probing rules the .NET framework uses to load the satellite assemblies, and I'd definitely like to avoid writing my own searching algorithm, because for example, I'd have to handle specific cases such as "zh-CN/zh-Hans/zh-CHS".
I can't find anything with the System.Windows.Forms.Help class that indicates that you can provide a CultureInfo object to specify a particular culture. Anybody else run across this yet?
Thanks!
Off hand, I would suggest that instead of deploying your CHM file side by side with the satellite assembly, that you actually include the CHM as an embedded resource in the satellite assembly itself. Remember that an assembly can actually be contained across multiple files. What makes an assembly and assembly is the manifest.
By doing that, you can then request the resource for the current locale programatically, let the framework tell you the URL, and then supply that file location to the Help class.
Related
I’m working with an application for both Windows desktop and Windows store, potentially I will add Windows Phone in the future. I’m having most of my logic in a library and create different GUI for the different platforms.
I want to localize my application and want to share string resources between the platforms. But how do I do that?
For Windows desktop the most common approach seems to be using resx files. Here is a short example:
http://compositeextensions.codeplex.com/discussions/52910
For Windows store app resw files are used instead, here is an example of that:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh965326.aspx
Both these solutions are platform specific which I don’t like :-(. I really want to have all my string in one file/language and being able to use that in all platforms. Is there any solution for this?
Update 17 Feb 2014: As I understand it resx and resw files are in the same format. What is missing in Windows store app is that no class file is generated for the resw file. If I just could get a file like that my problems would be solved. Then I could put an instance of that class in my view model and access all text via properties.
The class file generated in WPF application almost works. The problem is this line that looks something like this:
global::System.Resources.ResourceManager temp = new global::System.Resources.ResourceManager("ResxTest.Properties.StringTest", typeof(StringTest).Assembly);
To get this to compile I need to change it to this:
global::System.Resources.ResourceManager temp = new System.Resources.ResourceManager("ResxTest.Properties.StringTest", typeof(StringTest).GetTypeInfo().Assembly);
But the resource ResxTest.Properties.StringTest can’t be loaded in my Windows Store application. For some reason I need to rename my resource to Resource.resw and load it with the name “Resource”. I have tried all kind of names but this is the only one that works. Using name MyApplication.MyResource never works.
I’m not sure if I’m on the right track. I’m almost so desperate that I will make my own solution were I convert an XML-file with all strings I needed to a huge class with properties that I could use to get all string without any resource files. But I think that is ugly and cheating so I hope someone could give me a better idea :-).
Update 24 Feb 2014: I was wrong! Things are working quite nicely with Portable class library. If I use that I could put an instance of auto generated C# class in my view model and access all strings from that object.
But if I use an ordinary library things doesn’t work as properly in Windows Store app (WPF is fine). I have tried to copy all files to a Windows store class library from a working Portable class library. When I try to create an instance of the auto generated file I always get:
An exception of type 'System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException' occurred in mscorlib.dll but was not handled in user code
Additional information: Unable to load resources for resource file "MetroLib.StringResources" in package…
Quite annoying since I’m using the express editions of Visual Studio where portable class library isn’t available. So probably I will develop my own solution to generate classes from a resource file (which also gives me some other benefits). But I’m still curious what I’m doing wrong.
I finally solved the problem. I simply developed a simple tool (ResToCode) to convert resource files to pure C# classes. Quite similar to what Visual Studios resgen.exe is doing, but with some extra features. It works really well so I’m quite happy about it :-).
The tool is available for anyone at CodeProject:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/744528/ResToCode-Localization-tool-for-Windows-Desktop-St
You can put all your resources in a Portable class library and use these libraries on all platform. You might have to check what version of .NET framework you are using. Portable libraries are not available on all the versions of all the platforms.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh871422(v=vs.110).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/gg597391(v=vs.110).aspx#members
Have you looked at the Multilingual App Toolkit? It keeps the translations in an industry standard XLIFF format and can generate resources files for Windows and Windows Phone.
I had the same issue with the MissingManifestResourceException for Portable Class Libraries too. Today I created a new Portable Class Library with another name (without the string 'Resources' in it): and it works like a charm. No idea why this hasn't worked before (perhaps the name of the resource).
I'm attempting to use Dotfuscator 4.7.1000 to obfuscate a Silverlight library that is strongly named. When I attempt to do so, I get the following error message:
External type not found
System.Data.Services.Client.LoadCompletedEventArgs,System.Data.Services.Client,
Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35.
I have tried adding this assembly to the GAC, and have tried adding user defined assembly load paths to the configuration to locations where this assembly is located to no avail.
I then tried adding System.Data.Services.Client to the input assemblies and ran it again. This time it gets further, but ultimately I get:
Warning: Password protected Strong Name files are not supported
sn returned 1.
It appears as though it is attempting to run sn.exe on System.Data.Services.Client.dll with my local key. I've tried excluding this assembly from any obfuscation tasks, but it continues to do so.
Is there something I'm missing when trying to obfuscate this library? Is there some other way to directly point it to the DLL it can't seem to find that I don't know about? Or can I include the DLL in the project without it trying to obfuscate the Silverlight library?
And for the moment, please no suggestions on alternate obfuscators. My company has a license for Dotfuscator and I'd like to get this running using that. Thanks!
Somehow I must have been screwing up my user defined assembly load paths. As soon as I re-added the path to the Silverlight 4.0 client DLLs everything worked without having to reference System.Data.Services.Client.
I've created a Windows Forms (C#) application called "Image Processing". It uses many external dlls so I decided to use ILMerge to merge all of them into one exe file and it worked. But today I've localized my application. After building I had 3 new folders in Debug folder: "en-US", "ru-RU", "uk-UA" with one dll with the same name "ImageProcessing.resources.dll". So I included all of them in a ILMerge command:
ILMerge.exe /t:winexe /out:ImageProcessingRelease.exe ImageProcessing.exe AForge.dll AForge.Imaging.dll AForge.Math.dll DevExpress.Data.v10.2.dll DevExpress.Utils.v10.2.dll DevExpress.XtraBars.v10.2.dll DevExpress.XtraEditors.v10.2.dll FreeImageNET.dll uk-UA\ImageProcessing.resources.dll ru-RU\ImageProcessing.resources.dll en-US\ImageProcessing.resources.dll
My program stores language locale in settings. After merging I can't change language, but settings are changing.
I don't know what else I can include here for more details so tell me please what.
The answer is simple. ILMerge is not suitable in this case, as .NET Framework relies on the folder structure to determine which resource file to use.
It is meaningless to combine assemblies in that way, and some third party assembly vendor's end user license does not permit you to merge their product with your own assemblies.
I've an application, that uses encrypted (txt) files to store data. After investigating the decompiled assembly I concluded that it's a file of some DBMS. So how can find out which DBMS is this application using to store it's data, so that I can attach that file to the correct DBMS.
This is little application and there is no license problem. I can just ask the owner to gimme the data, but just curious to solve this myself.
MORE INFO:
Platform is Windows, and after trying couple of decompilers I concluded that it WAS written in Visual C++. However I couldn't fully decompile this exe, otherwise I just could find out it from the source code.
A couple ideas.
If opening the file in a HEX editor doesn't give you any information (like a magic identifier at the start of the file, which you can pop into google, then:
Use the depends tool from microsoft to grab a list of the DLLs being loaded by the application. Chances are whatever DBMS it's using is contained in an external library.
If the first two suggestions yield nothing, load the executable into IDA pro freeware and have a look at the code which is creating these files.
I don't quite understand how Silverlight code works within the browser. Are the assemblies downloaded to the client machine? Is there any chance of the code getting decompiled using Reflector or some similar tool? If so, what options does one have to protect the code? Do .net obfuscators work with Silverlight?
Whenever you are in a web browser, all client side code is downloaded to the machine and can be examined by the user. This goes for Javascript, Flash, and Silverlight.
If you have proprietary code that absolutely must be hidden then you need to put it on the server and expose an API that the clients can call to show information to the user.
To view a Silverlight application the client download a .xap file that contains the dll and one configuration xml and optional resources. The dll contains compiled c# code that runs in a Silverlight runtime in client machine. Silverlight runtime is basically a subset of complete .net runtime. So the point is user gets the code in dll and then can use tools to get original source code. So at most you can do is obfuscation. Still for very critical code that should not be the option. You can use some other way (WCF or other webservices to hide some part of your code may be) if it shouts your need.
If you want to see just how easy it is to look at the code in a silverlight app just run SilverlightSpylink text by FirstFloor. As long as your have .NET Reflector installed you will be able to see (as you interact with the app) all the source code including the xaml files.
Since the code does get downloaded to the client (and even trying to prevent it with pragma no-cache won't work since they can hit the URL) you will need to protect your code by keeping important logic on the server.
If your afraid some one will steal your intellectual property and that law is not enough, Then you will need to obfuscate your code. But I would not call that protection per say but a deterrent to the casual reverse engineer.
Putting a pragma -No Cache- will prevent the .xap from being stored on the machine, instead it will be streamed by the Silverlight plugin. Without the pragma the .xap file is stored in the temp internet files.
Putting the application on a page on https will further protect the transmition of the .xap
If possible require authentication to view the web page / .xap file (thanks Joel)
Emrah,
Yes obfuscation is possible for SL application.
Yes, Silverlight xap files are nothing but zip files with your assemblies in them, so they do need protection via obfuscation. Give Crypto Obfuscator a try - it directly obfuscates xap files, it can also obfuscate XAML files in your assemblies by renaming class references, stripping comments, whitespace, newlines, etc