by Henry Minsky, Yon Feldman, Lars Pind, others
+by Henry Minsky, Yon Feldman, Lars Pind, others
++Definitions
+internationalization (i18n)The provision within a computer program of the capability of making itself adaptable to the requirements of different native languages, local customs and coded character sets.
locale
The definition of the subset of a user's environment that @@ -19,27 +21,35 @@ customs and coded character sets.
globalization
A product development approach which ensures that software products are usable in the worldwide markets through a combination of internationalization and localization.
-II. Vision Statement
+
Building an application often involves making a number of + +
Building an application often involves making a number of assumptions on the part of the developers which depend on their own culture. These include constant strings in the user interface and system error messages, names of countries, cities, order of given and family names for people, syntax of numeric and date strings and -collation order of strings.
The ACS should be able to operate in languages and regions +collation order of strings.
+The ACS should be able to operate in languages and regions beyond US English. The goal of ACS Globalization is to provide a clean and efficient way to factor out the locale dependent functionality from our applications, in order to be able to easily -swap in alternate localizations.
This in turn will reduce redundant, costly, and error prone +swap in alternate localizations.
+This in turn will reduce redundant, costly, and error prone rework when targeting the toolkit or applications built with the -toolkit to another locale.
The cost of porting the ACS to another locale without some kind +toolkit to another locale.
+The cost of porting the ACS to another locale without some kind of globalization support would be large and ongoing, since without a mechanism to incorporate the locale-specific changes cleanly back into the code base, it would require making a new fork of the -source code for each locale.
Since the internationalization APIs may potentially be used on + +
Since the internationalization APIs may potentially be used on every page in an application, the overhead for adding internationalization to a module or application must not cause a -significant time delay in handling page requests.
In many cases there are facilities in Oracle to perform various +significant time delay in handling page requests.
+In many cases there are facilities in Oracle to perform various localization functions, and also there are facilities in Java which we will want to move to. So the design to meet the requirements will tend to rely on these capabilities, or close approximations to them where possible, in order to make it easier to maintain Tcl and -Java ACS versions.
Other application servers: ATG Dyanmo, Broadvision, Vignette, -... ? Anyone know how they deal with i18n ?
Other application servers: ATG Dyanmo, Broadvision, Vignette, +... ? Anyone know how they deal with i18n ?
+10.30 For each locale there will be default date, number and currency formats.
-ad_conn structure.
-For example, what approaches could be used to implement a @@ -151,11 +179,15 @@ themselves are locale-specific, such as images of English or Japanese text (as on www.arsdigita.com). It should be easy to specify alternate configurations of text and graphics to lay out -the page for different locales.
Design note: Alternative mechanisms to implement this +the page for different locales.
+Design note: Alternative mechanisms to implement this functionality might include using templates, Java ResourceBundles, content-item containers in the Content Repository, or some convention assigning a common prefix to key strings in the message -catalog.
@@ -194,33 +226,42 @@ caching for performance? Would we get a nice user interface and version control almost for free? -
+ +
50.0 A locale will have a primary associated character set which is used to encode text in the language. When given a locale, we can query the system for the associated character set to -use.
The assumption is that we are going to use Unicode in our +use.
+The assumption is that we are going to use Unicode in our database to hold all text data. Our current programming environments (Tcl/Oracle or Java/Oracle) operate on Unicode data internally. However, since Unicode is not yet commonly used in browsers and authoring tools, the system must be able to read and write other character sets. In particular, conversions to and from Unicode will need to be explicitly performed at the following -times:
+
Design question: Do we want to mandate
that all template files be stored in UTF8? I don't think so,
because most people don't have Unicode editors, or don't want to be
bothered with an extra step to convert files to UTF8 and back when
editing them in their favorite editor.
-
Same question for script and template +
+Same question for script and template files, how do we know what language and character set they are authored in? Should we overload the filename suffix (e.g., -'.shiftjis.adp', '.ja_JP.euc.adp')?
The simplest design is probably just to +'.shiftjis.adp', '.ja_JP.euc.adp')?
+The simplest design is probably just to assign a default mapping from each locale to character a set: e.g. ja_JP -> ShiftJIS, fr_FR -> ISO-8859-1. +++ (see new ACS/Java -notes) +++
+notes) +++ ++Tcl Source File Character Set
There are two classes of Tcl files loaded by the system; library files loaded at server startup, and page script files, which are @@ -255,7 +296,9 @@ 50.50 It must be possible for a developer to manually override the output character set encoding for a request using an API function. -VI.F ACS Kernel Issues
++VI.F ACS Kernel Issues
+60.10 All ACS error messages must use the message catalog and the request locale to generate error message for the appropriate locale. @@ -265,7 +308,9 @@ 60.30 Where files are written or read from disk, their filenames must use a character set and character values which are safe for the underlying operating system. -VI.G Templates
++VI.G Templates
+70.0 For a given abstract URL, the designer may create multiple locale-specific template files may be created (one per locale or language) @@ -297,7 +342,9 @@ standard method for a user to indicate the charset of a text file being uploaded must be provided.Design note: this presumably applies to uploading data to the content repository as well
-VI.H Sorting and Searching
++VI.H Sorting and Searching
+80.10 Support API for correct collation (sorting order) on lists of strings in locale-dependent way.@@ -308,7 +355,9 @@
ORDER BYclauses in queries.80.40 The system must handle full-text search in any supported language.
-VI.G Time Zones
++VI.G Time Zones
+90.10 Provide API support for specifying a time zone@@ -326,11 +375,15 @@ 90.60 The default if we can't determine a time zone is to display all dates and times in some universal time zone such as GMT.
-VI.H Database
++
VI.H Database
+100.10 Since UTF8 strings can use up to three (UCS2) or six (UCS4) bytes per character, make sure that column size declarations in the schema are large enough to accomodate required -data (such as email addresses in Japanese).
VI.I Email and Messaging
+data (such as email addresses in Japanese).
| Document Revision # | Action Taken, Notes | When? | By Whom? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.3 | comments from Christian | 1/14/2000 | Henry Minsky |
Last modified: $Date$
- +Last modified: $Date$