Localizing Newton Applications

Using the Localization Features of the Newton

To use one of these values, access the appropriate slot by dereferencing

ROM_dateTimeStrSpecs

with a dot operator, as in the following example:

LongDateStr(Time(),ROM_datetimestrspecs.longDateStrSpec);

Using these predefined format specifications also saves the trouble of defining them
at compile time and initializing slots with the compile-time variables at run time.

Format specifications available from the

ROM_dateTimeStrSpecs

object are

listed in "System-Defined Format Specifications" (page 17-11) in Newton
Programmer's Reference

A date or time format specification is an array, the elements of which are
themselves two-element arrays. The first element in each two-element array is a
constant specifying the item to display. The second element is a constant specifying
the format in which to display that item.

The complete set of constants is listed in "Constants to Create Your Own
Specification" (page 17-13) in Newton Programmer's Reference.

For example, the two-element array

[kElementDayOfWeek, kFormatAbbr]

specifies that the day in a date string is to be displayed in abbreviated format, such
as "Wed". On the other hand, the two-element array

[kElementDayOfWeek,

kFormatLong]

specifies that the day of the week is to be displayed in long

format, such as "Wednesday".

The following code example uses system-supplied constants to build an array of

[

,

]

pairs specifying the output of a date string. This array is

supplied as the argument to the

GetDateStringSpec

function, which returns the

format specification passed to the

LongDateStr

function. The

LongDateStr

function returns a string with the current time (returned by the

Time

function)

formatted as specified by the format specification:

// at compile time, define my array of
// element and format pairs
DefConst('myArray,

[

[kElementYear, kFormatNumeric],// year
[kElementDay, kFormatNumeric],// day of month
[kElementMonth, kFormatLong],// name of month
[kElementDayOfWeek, kFormatLong]// day of week

]);

// create the formatSpec
// this spec returns a string such as "February 1, 1994"
DefConst('kmyDateSpec, GetDateStringSpec(myArray));