c# - Localization: How to map culture info to a script name or Unicode character range?

Question

I need some information about localization. I am using .net 2.0 with C# 2.0 which takes care of most of the localization related issues. However, I need to manually draw the alphabets corresponding to the current culture on the screen in one particular screen.

This would be similar to the Contacts screen in Microsoft Outlook (Address Cards view or Detailed Address Cards View under Contacts), and so it needs a the column of buttons at the right end, one for each alphabet.

I am trying to emulate that, but I don't want to ask the user to choose the script. If the current culture is say, Chinese, I want to draw Chinese alphabets. When the user changes the culture info to English (and when he restarts the application) I want to draw English alphabets instead. Hope you understand where I am going with this query.

I can determine the culture of the current user (Application.CurrentCulture or System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture will give the culture related information). I also have all the scripts to render the alphabets. However, the problem is that I don't know how to map the culture info to the name of a script.

In other words, is there a way to determine the script name corresponding to a culture? Or is it possible to determine the range of Unicode character values corresponding to a culture? Either of them would allow me to render the alphabets on the button properly.

Any suggestions or guidance regarding this is truly appreciated. If there is something fundamentally wrong with my approach (or with what I am trying to achieve), please point out that as well. Thanks for your time.

PS: I know the easiest solution is to either configure the script name as part of user preferences or display a list of languages for the user to choose from (a la Contact in Outlook 2007). But I am just trying to see whether I can render the alphabets corresponding to the culture without the user having to do anything.

Answer 1

In native code there's LOCALE_SSCRIPTS for GetLocaleInfoEx() (Vista & above) that shows you what scripts are expected for a locale. There isn't a similar concept for .Net at this time.