User Guide

Creating documents with multilanguage text without using the Strings panel 249
You should save the external file in UTF-8 (recommended), UTF-16BE, or UTF-16LE format,
using an application that supports the format. If you are using UTF-16BE or UTF-16LE format,
the file must begin with a BOM to identify the encoding format to Flash Player. For more
information, see “Unicode encoding formats supported by Flash Player” on page 237.
Note: If the external file is an XML file, you cannot use an XML encoding tag to change the encoding
of the file. You should save the file in a supported Unicode format. For more information, see “About
encoding in external XML files” on page 237.
To include multilanguage text using an externally loaded file:
1. In the Flash authoring tool, create a dynamic or input text field to show the text in the
document. For more information, see Chapter 6, “Working with Text,” on page 105.
2. In the Property inspector, with the text field selected, assign an instance name to the text field.
3. Create a text or XML file that defines the value for the text filed variable.
4. Save the file in UTF-8 (recommended), UTF-16BE, or UTF-16LE format.
If you are using UTF-16 format, make sure a BOM is included at the beginning of the file to
identify the encoding:
■ For UTF-16BE, the first byte of the file should be OxFE, and the second byte should
be OxFF.
■ For UTF-16LE, the first byte of the file should be OxFF, and the second byte should
be OxFE.
Note: Most text editors that can save files in UTF-16BE or LE automatically add the BOMs to
the files.
5. Use one of the following ActionScript procedures to reference the external file and load it into
the dynamic or input text field:
■ Use the loadVariables action to load an external file. For more information, see
loadVariables() in Flash ActionScript Language Reference.
■ Use the getURL action to load an external file from a specified URL. For more information,
see
getURL() in Flash ActionScript Language Reference.
■ Use the LoadVars object (a predefined client-server object) to load an external text file
from a specified URL. For more information, see “LoadVars class” in Flash ActionScript
Language Reference.
■ Use the XML object (a predefined client-server object) to load an external XML file from a
specified URL. For more information, see “XML class” in Flash ActionScript Language
Reference.
Creating documents with multilanguage text using the #include action
You can create a document that contains multiple languages using the
#include action.
You should save the text file in UTF-8 format. Save the file using an application that supports
UTF-8 encoding, such as Dreamweaver.