Creating a Multilingual Setup Package

The Setup packages that you create with InstallMate can be localized in any language supported by Windows. You can choose to build a separate Setup package for each language, or to create a single package that contains all languages. In the latter case, the customer can select his preferred language at installation time. The localization includes the following elements:

Localized dialog boxes

All installer dialog boxes can be fully localized. They also support right-to-left reading for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Localized Readme and License Agreements

The Readme and License agreement texts are RichText resources; you can create as many as you like, in any language.

Language-specific files and components

You can mark components for specific languages; the components and their contents (files, shortcuts, registry values, etc.) will only be installed if the corresponding language is selected during installation.

How to create a multilingual Setup package

To create a multilingual Setup package, act as follows.

1. Create an InstallMate project. On the Project languages page of the New Project wizard you can select the languages for the installer.
2. If you want to add or remove any languages later on, you can do so on the Languages project page.
3. Go to the Project overview project page.
4. Select the package, then set its Languages field to Per language, Multilingual, or Multilingual, auto.
5. To select a subset of the project languages for the package, click on the ... button next to the Languages field and check or clear the boxes next to each language in the Select Installation Languages dialog box that appears.

6. Build the package (press F7).

Adding or removing languages in steps 1 or 2 automatically adds or removes the corresponding translations to the dialog boxes.

How to add localized Readme and License Agreement texts

If you want to provide localized Readme or License Agreement texts, continue with the following steps.

1. Go to the RichTexts project page.
2. Create the Readme texts for each language that you want to support. See Displaying Readme Information for details.
3. If desired, do the same for the License Agreement texts. See Displaying a License Agreement for details.
4. When finished with the texts, go to the Dialogs project page.
5. For Readme texts, select the predefined ReadmeDlg dialog box.
6. Select the RichText control named MainText and localize its RTF name attribute as follows:
   1. Make sure that the * button to the right of the field is pressed in.
   2. In the main toolbar, select the desired language.
   3. Click on the ... button to the right of the RTF name field to open the Select RichText dialog box and select the RichText resource for the current language.
   4. Repeat steps b and c for any remaining languages.
7. To localize the License agreement texts, select the predefined LicenseDlg dialog box, then repeat step 6.

Tip - You don't need to create a separate Readme or License Agreement text for each language. It is perfectly all right to associate a RichText resource with more than one language. This might be useful, for example, if you do not have translations available for all languages that InstallMate supports and want to assign, say, the English Readme text to the languages that you didn't translate.

At installation time, Setup will display the Readme and License Agreement texts that are associated with the language selected by the customer.

How to specify language-specific files and components

To mark certain files or components for installation only for designated languages, act as follows.

1. Go to the Components project page.

2. For each component that has specific language requirements, do the following. You can select more than one component; changes you make will be applied to all selected components. (For language-specific files, select the component to which the file belongs.)

   1. Click on the Languages... button in the Component attributes pane.
   2. In the Select Installation Languages dialog box that appears, click the Install for these languages only bullet, then select the appropriate languages.
   3. Click Select to close the dialog box and apply the language selection to the components.
3. To revert the language selection process, repeat the previous steps but select Install for all languages instead.

At installation time, Setup will only install components and their contents that are marked specifically for the language chosen by the customer, plus all components that are marked Install for all languages.