>Yes, that would be cool but that means that the emulator would need to
>distribute those translation files and the programmer of the emulator would
>need to put that code into each programmed game.
Not at all.
>As if the life of emulator writers is not difficult enough.
I know exactly what is involved in writing an emulator, and all of the
hassles.
I wouldn't wish any more complexity on these authors.
In fact, I was expressing exactly the opposite intent.
What I meant was, "a set of external files that others could contribute, or
extend". They could be text in any language, and nobody would need to
re-structure a ROM "because the text is bigger than before".
These EXTERNAL files would be similar to the "sample" files on MAME for
example; they would not be an integral part of the emulator, and could be
replaced with various different versions (english/french/spanish/hilarious
joke/etc.)
The texts that would be shown (from these files) would be basically a
separate, and very simple, function of the emulator - just to display some
text when an event happens. Hopefully, they could be displayed outside of
the normal view window for the game, so as not to interfere with playing
the game.
And the text could also be suppressed...
And these files could become a standard format across several emulators, so
editors could be created to make these external files... so individuals
could be more efficient at their translation efforts...
>What would be
>cool is if the emulator had a universal translator built into it.
Great idea. But not exactly classifiable as a "side feature" of an emulator.
Kind of more like the holy grail of Artificial Intelligence research for
the past 40 years...
>It would be nice if there was an application that sat on top that
>would intercept the calls to the fonts, could understand the fonts and then
>translate it using a code dictionary.
That is a slightly easier task than the previous suggestion... that is,
this one is technically feasible with today's technology (although no
simple feat).
- Dave