Can I provide localized CHM files for an MMC 3.0 snap-in on Windows 2003?

Question

Hi all,

I am developing a MMC 3.0 snap-in using C#. I would like my snap-in to automatically localize itself according to the current language, i.e. on a Spanish OS, the snap-in should display in Spanish and should use a Spanish help file.

Since my snap-in is a .NET application, GUI localisation is no problem. However, I am having trouble with the localisation of my HTML Help (CHM) file. I want to deploy several localised CHM files to disk, and for MMC to choose the appropriate CHM file to display at run-time.

At the moment, my snap-in launches the English version of my CHM file, which is defined in the "HelpTopic" and "LinkHelpTopics" registry values under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MMC\SnapIns\<snapin-guid>. I have found an MSDN article that suggests that I can provide localised versions of this CHM file in a mui\<language-code> directory, e.g. (for Spanish) mui\3082\file.chm.

When I try this on Windows 2008, it works - the Spanish version of the help file appears. But when I try it on Windows 2003, I still get the English help file.

Does anyone know if this is a limitation of MMC 3.0 on Windows 2003? If so, what is the best way to achieve what I want to do?

Many thanks!

Answer 1

Just to follow up on this - I haven't found any evidence that this is possible. There is another article that describes how to override MMC's help system and use your own arbitrary mechanism to display help, but this requires users to download a hotfix, and works only on Windows 2008, so is no help for this particular problem.

In the end what I have decided to do is install a single CHM file and reference that in the registry; but that CHM file may be the English version, Spanish version, etc, depending on the user's Windows locale at the time of the install.