Multilingual User Interface (MUI) (Compact 2013)

8/28/2013

The Multilingual User Interface (MUI) allows users to change the language of the user interface (UI). The MUI switches languages by using a single core binary file that includes the system default language, with one resource dynamic-link library (DLL) for each additional language. The device boots with the system default language. A new user-selected language goes into effect after a soft reset.

The UI language switch requires recreating windows, menus, and dialog boxes with the newly loaded resources. In addition, to be considered successful, the language switch must display these elements with the correct fonts and locale-specific information.

Fonts affect the way that the UI is displayed on a MUI-enabled runtime image. Therefore, working with languages that use different fonts requires special considerations.

To include the MUI in your OS, do the following:

• Include the fonts for all languages that the OS supports in the runtime image. Font linking solves most problems that can arise. Other issues can be handled with appropriate registry settings. For more information, see Fonts Registry Settings and Fonts
  . 
• Set the following environment variables to determine the languages for the MUI:

  Environment Variable	Use
  __LOCLANGIDLIST	Selects a list of locale identifiers (identifiers with data type LCID) for the languages used to build localized versions of the UI
  _IMAGELANGIDLIST	Selects a list of locale identifiers for the MUI resources that are added to the runtime image. This list must correspond to the list of locale identifiers provided in __LOCLANGIDLIST.
  _IMAGELANGIDBOOT	Selects a locale identifier that identifies the default UI language when the system boots and indicates the current UI language. This locale identifier must be contained in the list indicated by _IMAGELANGIDLIST.

  These environment variables are set based on the settings you choose for your OS design using Platform Builder. In addition, you can set or clear environment variables from a command prompt build window or a batch file.

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