Locale-specific Features
Go Up to Enabling Application Code to Work for Different Locales
Locale-specific features include date, time, number, and currency formats; sorting orders; keyboard layouts; input methods; common paper sizes.
You can add extra features to your application for specific locales. In particular, for Asian language environments, you may want your application to control the Input Method Editor (IME) that is used to convert the keystrokes typed by the user into character strings.
Controls offer support in programming the IME. Most windowed controls that work directly with text input have an ImeName property that allows you to specify a particular IME that should be used when the control has input focus. They also provide an ImeMode property that specifies how the IME should convert keyboard input. ImeName introduces several protected methods ( SetIme) that you can use to control the IME from classes you define. In addition, the global Vcl.Forms.Screen variable provides information about the IMEs available on the user's system.
The global Vcl.Forms.Screen variable also provides information about the keyboard mapping installed on the user's system. You can use this to obtain locale-specific information about the environment in which your application is running.
The IME is available in VCL applications only.