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System.capabilities.language

Description

The string language property contains a two-letter code representing the language used for text on the operating system. The cross-platform codes used are a subset of those in the ISO-639-1 standard, "Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages" (see http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html). For example, "en" indicates English, and "fr" indicates French. Where applicable, language also includes a two-letter country code indicating the local variant of the language, as defined by ISO 3166 (see http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html). A hyphen separates the language code from the country code, if both are present. For example, "en-UK" indicates English, United Kingdom variant.

By checking the language setting, a movie can intelligently provide text in the appropriate language for the user's system. Multiple language assets can be embedded directly into a single movie or loaded dynamically as variables, XML, or entire movies.

The corresponding server string for language is LAN, with possible values listed in Table 18-4. See capabilities.serverString for details.

Table 18-4. Flash language codes

Language	ISO 639-1 language code	ISO 3166 country code
English, United States	en	US
English, United Kingdom	en	UK
French	fr
Korean	ko
Japanese	ja
Swedish	sv
German	de
Spanish	es
Italian	it
Simplified Chinese	zh	CN
Traditional Chinese	zh	TW
Portuguese	pt
Polish	pl
Hungarian	hu
Czech	cs
Turkish	tr
Finnish	fi
Danish	da
Norwegian	no
Dutch	nl
Russian	ru
Other/Unknown	xu

Bugs

The English language country codes (UK and US) are not properly set by all versions of Flash Player 6; In both countries, System.capabilities.language returns "en" and does not include a country code.

Example

The following code loads the English or French version of a movie, depending on the current language setting:

if (System.capabilities.language.substring(0,2) =  = "en") {
  trace("English language");
  content_mc.loadMovie("news-english.swf");
} else if (System.capabilities.language =  = "fr") {
  trace("French language");
  content_mc.loadMovie("news-french.swf");
}

See Also

Character Encoding," in Chapter 4

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