Microsoft KB Archive/208983

= How To Using MFC LOC DLLs =

Article ID: 208983

Article Last Modified on 11/21/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Foundation Class Library 4.2

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This article was previously published under Q208983



SUMMARY
Visual C++ provides resource only DLLs that have localized versions of the resources used by MFC. These are known generically as the MFC LOC DLLs. An MFC application will use the resources contained in the MFCxxLOC DLL as long as it is installed on the system.

In this article the term "MFC LOC" refers to MFC version independent localized resource only DLLs, "MFCxxLOC" refers to MFC version specific localized resource only DLLs, "MFC DLL" refers to the general MFC DLL such as MFC42.DLL or MFC40.DLL, and "MFCxx.DLL refers to a specific version of the MFC DLL.



MORE INFORMATION
When the MFC DLL loads its resources, MFC first checks to see if an MFCxxLOC DLL exists, and if it does, the resources from that DLL are loaded instead of those from the MFC DLL.

Visual C++ ships with MFCxxLOC DLLs localized for English (US), French (France), German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Simple Chinese, and Traditional Chinese languages. The DLLs are suffixed with a three letter language specifing indicating the localization of the DLL. For example, MFC42CHT.dll specifies Traditional Chinese and MFC42ITA.dll specifies the Italian. These DLLs are not installed during the setup of Visual C++ but can be found on the product CDs in the ...\OS\SYSTEM directory in Visual C++ 6.0 and in the ...\DevStudio\VC\Redist directory in Visual C++ 5.0.

In order for you to make sure the MFC DLL uses MFC resources from one of these resource only DLLs instead of the resources included in the MFC DLL, rename the DLL to MFCxxLOC.dll and install it in the same directory where the MFCxx.dll is located. For example, rename the MFC42fra DLL to MFC42LOC and install it in the system32 directory.

Since MFCxxLOC DLLs are only resource DLLs, versions localized for additional languages can be created by copying the an existing MFCxxLOC DLL, renaming it, for example to MFCxxHEB, and then opening and editing the DLL's resources appropriately.

There are important points concerning installation that should be considered before using the MFC LOC DLL. For example only one MFCxxLOC DLL can be installed at a time. This means that every applications that uses MFCxx.dll on a system where MFCxxLOC.dll is installed will also use the localized MFC resources from that MFCxxLOC.dll. This means that using the MFCxxLOC DLL is an unacceptable means of localizing MFC resources in situations where you would use MFC applications localized for multiple languages on the same system. For example, in Canada it is not unusual to have applications localized to French and English on the same system.

Before installing a MFCxxLOC DLL, you need to make sure that the locale for which it is intended matches the locale of the Windows system that is installed. Also, the locale is not different from the MFCxxLOC DLL already installed. The MFCxxLOC DLL is a system DLL so replacement of this DLL must be done when no other application on the system is using the MFCxx.dll. TN056 "Installation of MFC Components" provides detailed installation considerations and recommends that use of this DLL be avoided due to installation complexity.

