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Solaris 10 What's New

Language Support Enhancements

This section describes all language support features in the Solaris 10 3/05 release that are new or have been enhanced since the Solaris 9 OS was originally distributed in May 2002.

Unicode Version 4.0 Support

Unicode Version 3.2 support was introduced in the Software Express pilot program. In the Solaris Express 8/04 release, Solaris Unicode locales support the Unicode Version 4.0. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The Unicode Version 4.0 introduces 1226 new characters over the Unicode Version 3.2. This version also includes both normative changes and informative changes as described in “The Unicode Standard 4.0” (ISBN 0-321-18578-1). The standard can be referenced online at: http://www.unicode.org/standard/standard.html.

The UTF-8 character representation has been also changed to a more secure form since the UTF-8 Corrigendum that was originally published in the Unicode Version 3.1 and later updated at the Unicode Version 3.2.

This feature also implements the more secure UTF-8 character representation and byte sequences in iconv code conversions and OS-level multibyte functions such as the following:

For further information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Code Conversions for Internationalized Domain Name Support

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/03 release and revised in the Solaris Express 8/04 release. For Solaris 9 users, this feature is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) enables the use of non-English native language names as host and domain names. To use such non-English host and domain names, application developers must convert such names into ASCII Compatible Encoding (ACE) names in their applications as specified in the RFC 3490. System administrators and end users are also required to use ACE names in existing system files and applications where the networking or system administration applications do not yet support the non-English IDNs.

This feature aids in the conversion by providing the conversion API with various supported option arguments, a dedicated IDN encoding conversion utility, and iconv code conversions. Refer to the following man pages for more detail:

For further information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

New iconv Code Conversions

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 11/04 release.

Various new iconv code conversions between single-byte PC and Windows code pages and various Unicode forms have been added. Also, several major Asian code pages and UCS-2LE have been added.

Details are available at Appendix A in the International Language Environments Guide. See also the iconv_en_US.UTF–8(5) man page.

New Solaris Unicode Locales

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 7/04 release. Additional locales were added in the Solaris 9 9/04 release and in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The following Unicode locales have been added to Solaris:

The new locales are available from system login.

Locale Administrator

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 11/03 release and in the Solaris 9 9/04 release.

Locale administrator allows the user to query and configure the locales for a Solaris OS through a command-line interface. Using the localeadm tool, a user can display information about locale packages that are installed on the system or that reside on a particular device or directory. The user can add and remove locales on the current system on a per-region basis. For example, the user can add all locales in the Eastern European region to the current system. See the localeadm(1M) man page.

Prior to this feature's introduction, after a system was installed the user had to add or remove individual packages to change the locales on the machine. This process is prone to error because it is easy to miss or overlook packages. This tool is a supplement to the locale selection logic in the Solaris installer. The installer is still the primary application for the correct installation of Solaris locales.

Standard Type Services Framework

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 9/03 release and in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

The Standard Type Services Framework (STSF) is a pluggable object-based architecture that allows users to access typographically sophisticated text layout and rendering. The pluggable architecture of the framework gives users the ability to use different font rasterization engines and text layout processors to achieve the desired visual representation. The pluggable architecture also manages fonts and enables application-specific fonts to be created. STSF includes both a standalone API and an X server extension to handle rendering on the server side for improved efficiency. STSF is an open source project that is sponsored by Sun Microsystems.

For more information about the project and how to use the API, see http://stsf.sourceforge.net.

Auto Encoding Finder

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 9/03 release.

The Auto Encoding Finder is a useful utility for global character handling. Through a general-purpose interface, Auto Encoding Finder provides an easy way to detect the encoding of particular file or string, simplifying access to various language character encodings. For example, the utility simplifies the display of web pages that do not specify encoding information. Search engines, knowledge databases, and machine translation tools might also need to detect the encoding of the language data being accessed. The Auto Encoding Finder tool simplifies this process.

See the auto_ef(1) or libauto_ef(3LIB) man pages for more detail.

SunIM-based Korean Language Engine With Auxiliary Window Support

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Korean users of the Solaris Operating System can benefit from more comprehensive keyboard input method support for the Korean language. The new Korean Language Engine with auxiliary window support offers Korean users four auxiliary windows to control and configure the Korean input method (IM).

This IM supports three separate keyboard layouts: 2 beol sik, 3 beol sik 390, and 3 beol sik final.

Common Transliteration-based Input Method for All Indian Languages

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 12/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Users who operate within any Unicode (UTF-8) locale of the Solaris Operating System can now easily and intuitively input characters from Indian regional languages. Users who interact with CDE applications, StarOffice, or Mozilla can more easily interact with Indian scripts. After selecting the transliteration-based input method (IM), users can type phonetic equivalents of Indian language scripts in English. These equivalents are then displayed in the script that is selected, and are correctly shaped and rendered with the help of an underlying layout and shaper module. As transliteration is the most commonly used input method for Indian languages, this support can greatly enhance the usability of the eight Indian scripts that are provided in the Solaris software.

Additional Keyboard Support

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 4/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Software support for four additional keyboards has been added to the Solaris software: Russian keyboard Type 6, Estonian keyboard Type 6, French-Canadian keyboard Type 6, and Polish programmer's keyboard Type 5. This software support gives users in Russia, Canada, Estonia, and Poland greater flexibility for keyboard input. The support modifies standard U.S. keyboard layouts to different language needs.

Wubi Input Method

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 4/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The Wubi input method (IM) is widely used in China. The encoding rule for Wubi IM is based on the radical or stroke shape of Chinese characters. Users can rapidly type Chinese characters through a standard keyboard rather than through slower, phonetic-based input methods.

Input Method Support for Indic

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Input support for Indian regional language keyboards has been added to the Solaris Operating System. Indic language users can type Indic language characters by using their preferred keyboard layouts in the Solaris Operating System.

For further information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Seven Additional Indic Scripts for Support in Unicode Locales

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 4/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

In addition to the current support for Hindi, the following Indic scripts are now supported in the Solaris software:

Speakers of these Indian regional languages have language support in the Solaris Operating System for any of the Unicode locale environments that Solaris supports.

For further information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

HKSCS-2001 Support in Hong Kong Locales

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

HKSCS-2001 is a new version of the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS). This new version adds 116 characters to the previous HKSC-1999 character set. HKSCS-2001 is supported in these Solaris Hong Kong locales: zh_HK.BIG5HK and zh_HK.UTF-8.