#14 request feature for localized messages inside boot sectors

[joergt]

Hello,
at the moment the boot sectors created by ms-sys version 2.5.2 contain only
english messages, like
"Invalid partition table"
"Error loading operating system"
"Missing operating system"

For newer Microsoft boot sectors there exist already localized versions.
So a german variant contain instead of above mentioned strings messages like
"Ungültige Partitionstabelle"
"Fehler beim Laden des Betriebssystems"
"Betriebssystem fehlt"

So it would be nice if the program has an option like
"--lang [WANTED_LANGUAGE]" to use inside sectors translated strings for
language "WANTED_LANGUAGE" or use language depending on environment variables
if no "WANTED_LANGUAGE" language is explicitly mentioned.

The file command identifier (http://darwinsys.com/file/) recognize not only
the sector type. It also recognize the different language variants and
prints the translated strings. This is done by pattern defined by me inside
file-5.25/magic/Magdir/filesystems.

So it should not very difficult to implement such a language feature in the
program. The only bigger problem is to determine the new string length of
translated messages and change the offsets inside sectors accordingly.

with best regards
Jörg

[Henrik Carlqvist]

The idea with support for localized boot is interesting, but like the idea that every OS out there should be supported it will probably never happen that every language out there gets supported... The languages supported by the file command seems limited to english, german, french and some russian, spanish, italian and brazilian portugese.

One way to support every language out there would be to let the user write custom messages instead of having built in support for only a few languages.

Things would have been a lot easier if only a few message strings with fixed max lenghts had to be changed. Having to modify also parts of the assembler code will make such a feature harder to implement. It will also make it a little (but only a little) harder to detect the boot records ms-sys can write.

Of course the usefullness of localization would apply not only to the MBR but also most other boot records.

I don't think that I will spend my own time on this feature, but contributed patches would be considered.

regards Henrik