Translate OLED Texts

Projects Programming
1

Hi,

is there a library or best practice to support translation of e.g. OLED texts like babel with python? I like to provide different languages to be selected and optimize the handling.

Regards,
Nils

2

Do you mean to display text in different languages on an OLED?

If so, what languages and character fonts do you plan to use?

3

To my knowledge, I have not seen one; my belief is you would need to code the non-English display "text" strings yourself. You could keep multiple strings in flash in array-like fashion and allow the end-user to select the language off-set.
Arduino character arrays stored in flash at DuckDuckGo

Alternately, you can use compiler pre-processor directives to create a single binary that is language-specific; that is:
(see #ifdef and #ifndef)
Arduino Preprocessor Directives Tutorial - ifdef & endif (deviceplus.com)

4

Don't forget that the OLED requires a font library for each language character set.

5

I don't write it's best practice but that's the way I do to switch languages at compile time:

  • Each printout get its own #define text or char constant.
  • all #define of one language come together in one text_en.h file (in a separate tab),
  • at the end of the development I make a copy of the language file to my target language rename it to text_ge.h and translate the content.
  • finally I include either text_en.h or text_ge.h

short example of such a include file:

/* *******************************************************************
   all Text definitions
   ***************************************************************** */

#define TXT_ISO_LANGUAGE       "de"
#define TXT_LIQUID_INGESTION   "Flüssigkeitsaufnahme"
#define TXT_LIQUID_TOTAL       "Gesamt"
#define TXT_LIQUID_TOTAL_SHORT "Sum"

const char  *txtLiquid[]        = {"Wasser", "Kaffee","Sonstiges"};  
const char  *txtLiquidShort[]   = {"Was", "Kaf", "Son"};
6

The characterset is actually not a problem. Its german and english language I like to provide for selection via webgui. I am looking for something like a global var lang and the definition in one.

What do you think about this? :

byte lang = 1  <- 0: german, 1: english,...
const char  *txtLiquid[]        = {"Wasser", "Water"};  

void printOled() 
{
    printBlaBla(*txtLiquid[lang]);
}

@noiasca : Why do you define the array as a pointer? (Never done that in my hobby projects so I am not familiar with that...)

7

old dogs don't learn new tricks. It works. No need for a change. Its just an array of "strings".

8

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