Change your shell's language

One of GeoShell's more useful features is the fact that you can teach it new languages yourself, you don't have to wait for the developers to translate it for you. In other words:

If you look in your registry settings (using e.g. regedit) in the key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\geO\geOShell you will find a string called Language. By default this has the value American English. The moment you change that value, GeoShell creates a new file in your GeoShell directory, called Language.ini.

Let's try it... let's set that value to German (makes it easier for me. In fact it really doesn't matter how you call it. If you prefer, you may call it oberbayerisch or xy or oxford english or barking, what ever you like.

The next time you start GeoShell (recycle seems not to be enough) the Language.ini file is created.
It will look like this:

  [German]
  &top=
  &bottom=
  &left=
  &right=
  top-l&eft=
  top-r&ight=
  bottom-le&ft=
  bottom-ri&ght=
  &unlock=
  Control Panel=
  Printers=
  !DialUp Networking=
  My Computer=
  Drive=
  Some hotkeys probably conflicted with other hotkeys.\n
  YOU can fix them yourself by changing the keys assigned in:\n
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\geO\geOShell\Services\Hotkey\szIDs\n=

The Language.ini contains every message GeoShell gives (where "/n" stands for line break and "&"marks the next letter as keyboard shortcut/accelerator key ) . The file will grow and grow, because every time GeoShell gives a new output, it will be added to the Language.ini. E.g. if you set Ask before shutdown to 1 and hit win+x (GeoShell Hotkey for shuting down the shell) you will produce a box, asking you if you really want to shut down.

If you reload Language.ini you will notice a new line like this:

Are you sure you want to shutdown geOShell?\nThis will not exit windows.=

It's a miracle

And now it's your time. Grab the Language.ini with your favourite text editor and translate all that lines as you like them to appear the next time and write your translation behind the "=".

Back to the little example. As a German, I might prefer soemthing like "Möchtest Du GeoShell wirklich beenden? Windows wird dadurch nicht beendet." (Just an example) Now put that phrase into the Language.ini:

Are you sure you want to shutdown geOShell?\n This will not exit windows.=
Möchtest Du GeoShell wirklich beenden?\nWindows wird dadurch nicht beendet!

(the linebreaks are "virtual" just to save space)

Recycle and voilá:

(the yes and no buttons came from windows and can't be translated by GeoShell)

Thats the way you can change everything what appears in the Language.ini. Caused by some bug and some inconsequence by the authors of the shell and the plugins, some messages appear multiple times, but if you look closely, you may notice small differences.

The story doesn't end here
If you like, you can add multiple languages. Just change the Language setting again (maybe to "harsh"), and the next time GeoShell starts, it will append a new block in the Language.ini

 [harsh]
  &top=
  &bottom=
  &left=

back to... you know. What about:

It's just at your fingertips