Culture Information on the MainBoss Command Line

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The /MessageCultureInfo and /FormatCultureInfo options lets you specify Windows display language"culture" and formatting "culture" to be used when you execute MainBoss. A culture is a collection of information about language and other locale-based information, e.g. what monetary symbols are used in a particular place.

By default, MainBoss takes its message culture information from the current Windows Display Language for the user, and the formatting culture information from the "Format" field in the Format section of your Windows Regional Settings. It then attempts to operate in the language given by those settings (e.g. MainBoss attempts to run in French if that's what your settings dictate). However, if you specify /MessageCultureInfo and /FormatCultureInfo arguments on the command line, the argument overrides the Regional Settings. This is particularly useful if you're creating a batch command file or shell script that you want to have work in a specific language, no matter what the user's Regional Settings might be.

The argument of /MessageCultureInfo and /FormatCultureInfo is the official Windows "CultureInfo" string name for the desired culture. For example, if you want generic Spanish, you'd specify /MessageCultureInfo:es-ES; for U.S. English, you'd use /MessageCultureInfo:en-US. See your Windows documentation for recognized "CultureInfo" string identifiers.

The most common formatting culture "override" users may require is the currency symbol. This is configured in the culture specified in the "Format" field in the Format section of your Windows Regional Settings. If you override the currency symbol, then this symbol will be used in MainBoss reports and screen displays for currency.

Options on the MainBoss command line are not affected by /MessageCultureInfo. For example, the option /Mode:Requests does not change if you switch to a language where "requests" is translated to a different word.

Note: If you change the message culture information with /MessageCultureInfo, MainBoss makes the change after the command line arguments have been parsed. This means that if your command line has syntax errors, you may see error messages in the user's original preferred language, not in the language specified by /MessageCultureInfo.

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