Addressing Menu Items

[Bob Kochem]

[I apologize if this is an incredibly newbie question ...]

I am looking for a way via code to access all the menu itmes on a given
form. I am looking for something like the Forms or Controls collections, but
for menu items. Is there such a thing or method? I would prefer to avoid
using the Win API but will do so if that's the only way available.

This is for a language-translation (of an existing program) where I wish to
change (English to Spanish initially) the Descriptions for all the menu
items.

Thanks in advance

Bob K.

[Kiteman - Canada]

Re: Addressing Menu Items

I have a few multilingual programs (9 languages and counting...) and use the
following technique:

item.Caption = text

Under the Tools >>> Menu Editor, just give a name to each menu item.

You can then change the caption of the item using:

FileHeader.Capt ion = phrase$(97)
MenuExit.Captio n = phrase$(101)

I use an external ANSI text file for each language and just load each line
into a preset phrase when the language is changed on the fly.

Hope this gets you going.

I still have not found a way to support UNICODE characters in the menu
items, but spanish only requires the ANSI character set so you should be
fine.

Regards,
Tom

"Bob Kochem" <info@minutem an-systems.com> wrote in message
news:JKfyf.788$ SD3.741@trndny0 7...[color=blue]
> [I apologize if this is an incredibly newbie question ...]
>
> I am looking for a way via code to access all the menu itmes on a given
> form. I am looking for something like the Forms or Controls collections,
> but for menu items. Is there such a thing or method? I would prefer to
> avoid using the Win API but will do so if that's the only way available.
>
> This is for a language-translation (of an existing program) where I wish
> to change (English to Spanish initially) the Descriptions for all the
> menu items.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Bob K.[/color]

[Jay Taplin]

Re: Addressing Menu Items

You can do this with the controls collection of the form.

The following code loops through all the controls on the form, checking for
the type of the control. If it comes back as "Menu", then it is a menu
control/object. In other words, if the code makes it to the Debug.Print
line, then you have found a menu item. Good luck!

Private Sub Command1_Click( )
Dim ctl As VB.Control

For Each ctl In Me.Controls
If StrComp(TypeNam e(ctl), "Menu", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
'Found a menu item
Debug.Print ctl.Name
End If
Next

Set ctl = Nothing
End Sub

"Bob Kochem" <info@minutem an-systems.com> wrote in message
news:JKfyf.788$ SD3.741@trndny0 7...[color=blue]
> [I apologize if this is an incredibly newbie question ...]
>
> I am looking for a way via code to access all the menu itmes on a given
> form. I am looking for something like the Forms or Controls collections,
> but for menu items. Is there such a thing or method? I would prefer to
> avoid using the Win API but will do so if that's the only way available.
>
> This is for a language-translation (of an existing program) where I wish
> to change (English to Spanish initially) the Descriptions for all the
> menu items.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Bob K.
>[/color]

[Rick Rothstein [MVP - Visual Basic]]

Re: Addressing Menu Items

> Private Sub Command1_Click( )[color=blue]
> Dim ctl As VB.Control
>
> For Each ctl In Me.Controls
> If StrComp(TypeNam e(ctl), "Menu", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then[/color]

I would use the following If-Then statement instead of the above...

If TypeOf ctl Is Menu Then

Rick



[color=blue]
> 'Found a menu item
> Debug.Print ctl.Name
> End If
> Next
>
> Set ctl = Nothing
> End Sub[/color]

[Bob Kochem]

Re: Addressing Menu Items

Thanks to all who have replied here.

I think this gets me off and running.

I am assuming I can use a similar approach to rename all labels and other
named items on forms.

Can anyone point at a good tutorial on making programs support multiple
languages? I would like to avoid re-inventing the wheel if possible.

One more thing I am wrestling with is all the message boxes that are posted
in the program. The program's been around quite a while and now makes use of
the MsgBox in a couple hundred places. I am thinking of creating a "meta"
message box function, something like TransMsgBox, doing a global replace of
"MsgBox" with "TransMsgBo x" and then having the TransMsgBox function do the
translation (somehow) for every set of arguments passed to it.

Thanks,

Bob


"Kiteman - Canada" <-delete-kiteman@shaw.ca > wrote in message
news:y_gyf.3434 36$ki.139988@pd 7tw2no...[color=blue]
>I have a few multilingual programs (9 languages and counting...) and use
>the following technique:
>
> item.Caption = text
>
> Under the Tools >>> Menu Editor, just give a name to each menu item.
>
> You can then change the caption of the item using:
>
> FileHeader.Capt ion = phrase$(97)
> MenuExit.Captio n = phrase$(101)
>
> I use an external ANSI text file for each language and just load each line
> into a preset phrase when the language is changed on the fly.
>
> Hope this gets you going.
>
> I still have not found a way to support UNICODE characters in the menu
> items, but spanish only requires the ANSI character set so you should be
> fine.
>
> Regards,
> Tom
>
> "Bob Kochem" <info@minutem an-systems.com> wrote in message
> news:JKfyf.788$ SD3.741@trndny0 7...[color=green]
>> [I apologize if this is an incredibly newbie question ...]
>>
>> I am looking for a way via code to access all the menu itmes on a given
>> form. I am looking for something like the Forms or Controls collections,
>> but for menu items. Is there such a thing or method? I would prefer to
>> avoid using the Win API but will do so if that's the only way available.
>>
>> This is for a language-translation (of an existing program) where I wish
>> to change (English to Spanish initially) the Descriptions for all the
>> menu items.
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>> Bob K.[/color]
>
>[/color]

[Jay Taplin]

Re: Addressing Menu Items

Point! Thanks for the tip...

Jay Taplin, MCP

[Kiteman - Canada]

Re: Addressing Menu Items

Bob, take a look at my NPW9b or NPW-HA kite making programs at:

http://members.shaw.ca/kiteman/Downloads.htm

On each form I have built a Label that is large enough to contain the
translation with the greatest number of characters. The caption for the
label is set as:

Label1.Caption = Phrase$(xxx)

where "xxx" is obtained from the left three characters from the line in the
external language text file.

I did try using Resource files (websearch for "Resource files for
Localization")- it worked to some extent for my purposes, but since my
translations were being done by volunteers around the world, I couldn't let
multiple people have access to the resource file - it would bound to get
botched at some point.

A big advantage to using my external language file is that anyone can
perform a translation and plop it into the same folder - as long as it
follows my file naming convention it is automatically recognized the next
time the program is run and they can use it immediately. The only time
that I am required to do anything is if the person needs more room to fit
the extra characters that their verbose language might require. I have
found that if I allow room for the German language, that pretty much any
other language will fit well within that space.

If you require UNICODE support, you will have to use the objects from the MS
Forms 2.0 library.

If you know someone who is willing to translate my language files into
Spanish, I would appreciate it :-)


Tom

"Bob Kochem" <info@minutem an-systems.com>
wrote in message news:b_iyf.447$ Bn4.75@trndny08 ...
[color=blue]
>
> I think this gets me off and running.
>
> I am assuming I can use a similar approach to rename all labels and other
> named items on forms.
>
> Can anyone point at a good tutorial on making programs support multiple
> languages? I would like to avoid re-inventing the wheel if possible.
>
> One more thing I am wrestling with is all the message boxes that are
> posted in the program. The program's been around quite a while and now
> makes use of the MsgBox in a couple hundred places. I am thinking of
> creating a "meta" message box function, something like TransMsgBox, doing
> a global replace of "MsgBox" with "TransMsgBo x" and then having the
> TransMsgBox function do the translation (somehow) for every set of
> arguments passed to it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bob[color=green]
>> Tom
>>
>> "Bob Kochem" <info@minutem an-systems.com> wrote in message
>> news:JKfyf.788$ SD3.741@trndny0 7...[color=darkred]
>>> [I apologize if this is an incredibly newbie question ...]
>>>
>>> I am looking for a way via code to access all the menu itmes on a given
>>> form. I am looking for something like the Forms or Controls collections,
>>> but for menu items. Is there such a thing or method? I would prefer to
>>> avoid using the Win API but will do so if that's the only way available.
>>>
>>> This is for a language-translation (of an existing program) where I wish
>>> to change (English to Spanish initially) the Descriptions for all the
>>> menu items.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance
>>> Bob K.[/color][/color][/color]