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.NET assemblies are PE files that contain .NET metadata. Metadata contains information about the types used in code, references to other assemblies, list of .NET resources, digital signature, etc. Usually .NET assemblies contain only managed code but you can create assemblies with mixed code as well. Installation of .NET Framework is required to run executable .NET files.

The list of resources contains references to resource files. Resource files can be separate files (external resource files), or files, whose images are stored in PE files. A resource file can be a binary .NET resource file, graphic file, text file, etc. External resource files are localized separately.


Usually .NET assembly files are localized by creating .NET resource assemblies. Resource assemblies are the same as resource libraries. These are PE files that contain .NET resources and a minimal set of metadata to store them. Files of resource assemblies are saved to the folder, whose name corresponds to the letter code of the language: ru, ru-RU, de, de-DE, etc. The name of a resource assembly file is made by adding ".resources.dll” to the name of the original file.

For example:

somefile.exe => somefile.resources.dll.

The letter code of a language is inserted to names of localized .NET resources.
For example:

someresource.resources => someresource.ru.resources.

An assembly can contain resources of several languages. Resources of different languages have their own language code in the name.

A localized assembly must contain the code that enables loading resource assemblies. Usually the System.Resources.ResourceManager class is used for this purpose. You can find an example of localization using assemblies in the demo samples.

In addition to resource assemblies, Radialix 2 can create localized .NET assemblies. If necessary, it can add required resources and embed code for their loading into a localized file automatically.