VIEWMOL has been written to take full advantage of the language
independence of X windows. All program messages, menus, dialog box texts etc.
are stored outside of the program in resource files. Therefore it is possible
that different users can run the same VIEWMOL executable in different
languages on the same computer. Currently, four languages are supported:
English, French,
German, and Russian
. To adapt VIEWMOL to another
language only the
Xdefaults.<language>
file has to be translated. For a
native speaker of the language this will take between 45 and 60 minutes.
The Xdefaults.<language>
files provided with VIEWMOL have three
sections. The first section is related to the installation of external support
program, the second section contains default settings (see p.
). The third section contains all language dependent messages
and this is the only section which needs translation. To translate, translate
everything right of the colon. The strings '%s', '%d', or '%f' mark the
position of names or numbers which are filled in by the program and must
remain in the translated version at the appropriate position. After translation
install the new
Xdefaults.<language>
file as described in the
Installation section (cf. p. ) and VIEWMOL will
talk in your language. The author would appreciate to get a copy of the
translated resource file for inclusion in the next public release.