allendalepharm Chapter 77
Chapter 77
Chapter 17 Localization Project Launched
When Lin Feng got home, it was almost ten o'clock.
The living room light was on. Cheng Yuxin sat on the sofa, a book on her lap, her head slightly tilted—she was asleep.
He quietly changed his shoes, walked over, and tried to wake her up.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear that she was still holding a pen in her hand, and had drawn several horizontal lines on the book, the last one crooked and dragging to the bottom of the page.
Lin Feng stood there and looked at her for two seconds.
She wore pink loungewear, her hair was down, covering half her face. Her breathing was light, her chest rising and falling slightly.
He reached out and gently pulled the pen out.
Cheng Yuxin stirred and opened her eyes a crack.
"You're back?" The voice was muffled, not fully awake yet.
Lin Feng nodded.
Cheng Yuxin sat up straight, rubbed her eyes, and yawned.
"Have you eaten? I've left some in the pot for you."
Lin Feng said, "I ate. Uncle Sun treated me to it; it was from a roadside stall."
Cheng Yuxin hummed in agreement, stood up, and walked towards the bedroom.
He took two steps, then turned back.
"Your competition..." she paused, "is still more than four months away, don't push yourself too hard."
Lin Feng looked at her.
Cheng Yuxin's eyes were a little blurry under the light.
"Go to sleep," she said. "You have school tomorrow."
Then she pushed open the door and went inside.
Lin Feng stood there, watching the door close.
He turned and went to the kitchen.
There was half a bowl of rice in the pot, topped with a layer of vegetables—stir-fried greens, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and two pieces of braised pork, just like he had eaten for lunch.
He poked at the braised pork with his chopsticks; it was still hot.
He brought it out, sat at the table, and slowly finished eating.
While washing the dishes, he thought about what Cheng Yuxin had just said.
"Don't push yourself too hard."
Her eyes looked a little strange when she said that.
It's not worry, it's something else.
He couldn't explain it.
After washing the dishes and drying his hands, he went back to his room.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
A few things were on my mind.
Basketball. What Uncle Sun teaches, you have to practice until your body memorizes it. As for that mysterious expert's shooting, you have to figure out how he does it. There are still four months left until the winter break game; time is tight, but enough.
The computer. Liu Jian's 386 works. DOS system, Borland C++, that's sufficient. The localization software needs to be decided as soon as possible.
Money. I have a little over five hundred in my piggy bank, but it's not enough. I need to find a way to earn more.
He rolled over.
Then I remembered something.
In his past life, he wrote a piece of software—a small text processing tool for converting encodings. Back then, domestic encodings were a mess: GB2312, BIG5, HZ, all sorts of characters, making conversions very troublesome. He wrote a small tool for one-click encoding conversion and made it available for free download online.
Later, that tool was used by many people.
It is now 1995. The encoding problem is likely more serious.
His eyes lit up.
Correct.
The biggest challenge in localizing software is encoding. English software uses ASCII, while Chinese software needs to use GB2312. Simply translating English strings into Chinese and inserting them results in garbled text. The encoding issue must be addressed.
If he could write a tool to automatically handle encoding conversion, the workload of localization could be reduced by more than half.
Moreover, this tool itself can also be sold.
He sat up, turned on the desk lamp, and pulled a notebook and a pen from the drawer.
Start writing.
Page 1: Encoding conversion tools, requirements analysis.
It needs to support GB2312 to ASCII conversion.
It needs to support string length detection to avoid overflow due to excessive length.
Support for batch processing of resource files is required.
A simple interface is needed to allow users to select the source file and target encoding.