Common Desktop Environment: Help System Author's and Programmer's Guide

Creating a Formatting Table

A multibyte language, such as Japanese or Chinese, requires a formatting table. This table contains three message sets. The first set consists of characters that cannot start a line; the second set lists any characters that cannot end a line; and the third set indicates how to handle newline characters that occur between a single-byte and a multibyte character.

A formatting table is an ASCII file whose file name must end with a.msg extension. Figure 14-1 shows an excerpt from a formatting table for Simplified Chinese.

Figure 14-1 Sample formatting table

Graphic

Any line that begins with a $ (dollar sign) followed by a space is a comment.

Sample Formatting Table

A sample formatting table for a multibyte character set is located in the /usr/dt/dthelp/nls/zh_CN.dt-eucCN directory and is named fmt_tbl.msg.

The sample table can be modified by adding or removing characters. To edit the formatting table, use an editor capable of composing characters in the language you have chosen for the help information. If you intend to create help information using a multibyte language, you need to create a formatting table.

To Create a Message Catalog

If you translate the DtHelp.msg file, create a new formatting table, or modify the sample table (fmt_tbl.msg), you must update the message catalog used by the Help System.

    Use this command syntax to generate the catalog file:

gencat file.cat file.msg

Message catalogs for the standard desktop applications are located in the /usr/dt/lib/nls/msg/lang directory. To install a message catalog, refer to your operating system documentation for guidelines.

See Also