HEC-EFM 5.0 and HEC-EFM Plotter 3.0 are the first versions of those software to allow customization and translation of user interfaces. As those software continue to advance, language files will change to accommodate revisions and new labels. In this sense, language files are version specific even though most labels will not change from version to version.
HEC-EFM and HEC-EFM Plotter store language information per version. This helps maintain compatibility with already built language resources because existing projects and software will open with the proper language resources.
To assist with forward compatibility, release notes for future versions will include a list of language integers that were added or altered. Also, language file editors add new language integers when an existing language file is opened and then saved as a new file (doing a file Save would work too, but doing a file Save as… would also maintain integrity of the original file, which is potentially a language resource for other existing projects). New interface labels are displayed with the corresponding integer values as placeholders pending inclusion of customized or translated labels.
Disconnects in languages can be caused by changing computers or relocating, renaming, or deleting files associated with languages. Repairing languages is straightforward as long as the language resources are still available.
Please note that HEC-EFM and HEC-EFM Plotter have been developed exclusively on computers that use English (United States) as the active windows language. International users have encountered problems with performance on computers that use other languages as the active windows language. It would be very difficult to thoroughly test the software for a wide selection of active windows languages.
International users are encouraged to apply HEC-EFM and HEC-EFM Plotter on computers with English (United States) as the active windows language. The language support features detailed in this chapter will allow software interface labels to be translated to the user’s language of choice to assist with application.