Internationalization and Localization Using Microsoft .NET [Kindle Edition]

I found that the author wastes a great deal of space explaining concepts such as "The History of XML" and the basics of localization.

The most glaring omission is the lack of source code for a "functional" globalized application that demonstrates the concepts of satellite assemblies. The lack of source code is a glaring omission on the part of the publisher. In the end, I learned more from the WorldCalc SDK example than I did from this book.

Much of the book rehashes information available in the Visual Studio help documents.

I wish this book would have covered assembly tools such as ildasm. I, also, could not find mention of the all important Assembly Binding Log Viewer (FUSLOGVW.EXE).

This book was rushed to the market by the publisher. Hopefully, the topic will be addressed by another author who has more current information specific to actually working with .NET

I was also hoping for a lot of utilities that could make it easier to work with .Net, but there were none bundled.

On the good side, it was better than the Kaplan book in terms of typos and Mr. Symmonds rambled a lot less, too. And I do have to admit that the writing style was good. I really felt like the author was speaking to me. Unfortunately, after I was done with the mere 350 pages I realized that he was not saying as much as I would have liked.

NOTE: I will call Mr. Symmonds "Nick" in the review but I do not actually know him. It just seemed too odd to be constantly referring to him as "Mr. Symmonds" when he made the effort to so carefully provide such a comfortable writing persona. I hope he will not be offended. :-)

ON TO THE REVIEW:

I have to say that I was quite pleased by the book, which does a good job of explaining much of what it means to produce good international applications with the .Net framework. It has examples and it really covers many important details of the Globalization and Encoding classes that are a part of the new framework, as well as the localization model in Windows Forms (WinForms). Production values are first rate (something I truly envy since there were so many problems with the rush to market for my book!) and examples are both on point and to the point. The subject matter is something that sells itself, and Nick packages things up quite well. His writing style is also solid and does not talk down to the reader at all -- it is that of a colleague telling you something that can literally mean the world to your applications (pun intended).

Not all was perfect, though, so I will spend most of the time here explaining my "gripes"...

There was no CDROM, which for me at least made the "includes a resource editor" blurb a bit less than truthful -- there was no "some assembly required" listed there. This book really needed a CD with it, as people want to be able to try things and test them right away. When you buy the book, prepare to do a lot of typing to keep up with it!

Internationalization gets good attention and examples as I said, but there is a lot less conceptual reasoning behind them than I would have liked. One of the biggest conceptual problems I had there was that the international features were actually designed by the very same NLS team that created the original Win32 APIs, based on all of the good and bad lessons they had learned over the last decade and a half, a point that seems to have been overlooked here (as an occasional "almost" member of that team, I tend to notice such things!). Perhaps if Nick had spent more time talking to the NLS+ team he would have been able to add more of that viewpoint, which would have (in my opinion) really enhanced the book.

He also failed to mention issues such as limitations on Win9x (controls such as WinForms TextBox controls do not support languages not on the default system code page). This is mainly a bad thing for the framework but in a book covering this topic it should have been mentioned, both for the sake of internationalization and for localization into other languages.

The book spent a lot more time on issues surrounding localizability rather than localization proper (which is actually okay, as localizability -- the process of making something that can be localized -- is usually more important to developers), but it completely glossed over *some* important localizability issues such as dealing with issues in different important international markets (example -- no good discussion on GB18030 requirements in China or HKSCS in Hong Kong). Since support for GB18030 is mandated in China and since HKSCS 2.0 support is really needed for Hong Kong but is not currently provided, discussion of them would have been nice.

There is no good discussion on security issues (in light of the last minute, month-long delay of the product's release from Microsoft to do intensive security reviews) is also unfortunate. There *are* internationalization issues that affect security even in .Net (casing and collation can still cause security problems for the unwary even if you are safer from "C/C++" problems like buffer overruns) so the lack of mention of them is unfortunate.

I tend to forgive these points (other than the lack of a CDROM!) since there was no room to cover them -- the book is way too short, in my opinion! I would have liked it to be a lot longer so it had room to cover all those issues, especially with [he]list price (mine was free since I was reviewing, but my recommendation to others has to take price into account). With that said, if Nick revises the book, he must make it longer! I have little doubt that such a revision could contain coverage of these missing topics and thus has a lot of potential to complete the topic's coverage and make for a stellar reference.

In the end, I am forced to give it a 3/5 (though I think it actually deserves a 3.5/5, Amazon does have its limits!). It is DEFINITELY a book worth owning but you will have a lot of work to do -- both as you are reading and after you are done -- if you want to create good globalized software with .Net.