Appendix B Language Support Features and Enhancements

This appendix deals with the language enhancement support features introduced in Oracle Solaris 10 over different releases. It contains the following sections:

• Input Method Features

• File Encoding Examiner

• More Japanese iconv Modules for Unicode

• Zero-Country Code Keyboard Layout Support

• Unicode Version 4.0 Support

• Code Conversions for Internationalized Domain Name Support

• New iconv Code Conversions

• Standard Type Services Framework

• Additional Indic Scripts for Support in Unicode Locales

• HKSCS-2001 Support in Hong Kong Locales

Input Method Features

This section describes the language support features related to input methods that were added in different versions of Oracle Solaris operating system

Internet Intranet Input Method Framework (IIIMF) Hangul Language Engine

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 10/08 release.

The Hangul LE (Language Engine) is a new Korean input method that enhances user experience. Hangul LE has the following features:

• User-friendly GUI

• More convenient Hangul or Hanja input functionalities

  For more information, see the Hangul LE help.

libchewing 0.3.0

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 5/08 release.

Chewing input method (IM) is based on libchewing, which is an open-source library for Traditional Chinese input. libchewing is upgraded to the libchewing 0.3.0 version. libchewing 0.3.0 includes the following features:

• Incompatibility with API/ABI

• UTF-8 based language engine core for common Unicode environment

• Includes the libchewing-data subproject

• Zuin fixes and symbol improvements

• New binary form of user hash data to speed up loading and solving hash data corruption

• Improved calculation of internal tree and phone constants

• Revised tsi.src for richer phrases and avoiding crashes

• Merge phone and phrase from CNS11643

• Improved Han-Yu PinYin to use table-lookup implementation

• Experimental frequency evaluation that recomputes chewing lifetime

• Implementation of the choice mechanism for symbol pairs

• Experimental, memory-mapping based, binary data handling to speed up data loading

Input Method Switcher Enhancement and EMEA Keyboard Layout Emulation Support

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 8/07 release.

The input method switcher application, gnome-im-switcher-applet, is replaced with iiim-panel, a stand-alone GTK+ application. iiim-panel now starts and resides on the GNOME panel automatically when you log in to the Java Desktop System (Java DS) in UTF-8 or Asian locales. iiim-panel can also run in the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).

IIIMF supports language engines that emulate the EMEA keyboard layout such as French, Polish or Dutch.

For more information, see the iiim-properties online help.

IIIMF and Language Engines

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 11/06 release.

The Internet Intranet Input Method Framework (IIIMF) has been upgraded from revision 10 to revision 12.

This framework provides the following new features:

• Input Method Switcher — Displays input method status and switches input languages. You can add the input method switcher to the Java Desktop System (Java DS) panel. Select Add to Panel -> Utility -> Input Method Switcher to add the input method switcher to the Java DS panel.

• Utility for iiim-properties — Supports various input method preferences. Use one of the following methods to start the iiim-properties utility:

  • Select Launch -> Preferences -> Desktop Preferences -> Input Methods.

  • Click mouse button 3 on the Input method switcher and select Preference.

  • In the CDE environment, select Tool -> Input Method Preference from the CDE main menu or type iiim-properties at the command prompt.

Each language engine has also been upgraded to the IIIMF revision 12 base. The Japanese language engines, ATOK12 and Wnn6, have been updated to ATOK for Oracle Solaris and Wnn8 respectively. ATOK for Oracle Solaris is equivalent to ATOK17. A new Chinese chewing input method has also been added to the IIIMF.

Korean Language Engine With Auxiliary Window Support

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Korean users of the Oracle 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 the following auxiliary windows to control and configure the Korean input method (IM).

• User-based preferences within one window.

• A virtual keyboard environment within another window for point-and-click selection of Korean characters.

• Within another window, users can choose the symbols that they need from special characters that are based on code points.

• Organize all the windows within a special palette of control.

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 included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Users who operate within any Unicode (UTF-8) locale of the Oracle 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 Oracle Solaris software.

Wubi Input Method

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 language support feature has been added to the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

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

File Encoding Examiner

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 5/08 release.

The File Encoding Examiner fsexam enables you to convert the name of a file, or the contents of a plain-text file, from a legacy character encoding to UTF-8 encoding.The fsexam utility include the following new features:

• Encoding list customization

• Encoding auto-detection

• Support for dry runs, log files, batch conversion, file filtering, symbolic files, command line, and special file types like the compress file

For more information, see the fsexam(1) and fsexam(4) man pages.

More Japanese iconv Modules for Unicode

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 8/07 release.

Starting with this release, the following two types of codeset conversions between the Unicode and Japanese codesets have been added:

• In conversion from or to eucJP, PCK (SJIS), and ms932, iconv now supports UTF-16, UCS-2, UTF-32, UCS-4 and their fixed endian variants, such as UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE, and UTF-8.

• iconv now supports codeset name eucJP-ms to provide conversion between Japanese EUC and Unicode in the same way as Windows. All Unicode encoding variants mentioned previously, are also supported with eucJP-ms.

For more information, see the iconv_ja(5) man page.

Zero-Country Code Keyboard Layout Support

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 8/07 release and newer releases.

This feature provides a new command option kbd -s language. This option enables users to configure keyboard layouts in kernel. The Zero-CountryCode keyboard layout feature is particularly useful on SPARC and x86 systems. In prior releases, all “non-self-ID keyboards” were always recognized as US layout keyboard but now, with the kbd -s command, it is possible to correctly configure the keyboard layout in kernel

For more information, see the kbd(1) man page.

Unicode Version 4.0 Support

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Unicode Version 4.0 introduces 1226 new characters over Unicode Version 3.2.

For more information about UTF-8 byte sequences on Unicode 3.2, see Unicode 3.2 and 4.0 Support in New Internationalization and Localization Features.

The UTF-8 character representation has been also changed to a more secure form. The UTF-8 Corrigendum 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 the iconv code conversions and the following OS-level multibyte functions:

• mbtowc(3C)

• mbstowcs(3C)

• mbrtowc(3C)

• mblen(3C)

• mbsrtowcs(3C)

• fgetwc(3C)

• mbrlen(3C)

For more information, see Unicode Standard 4.0 (ISBN 0-321-18578-1).

Code Conversions for Internationalized Domain Name Support

This feature is included in the Solaris Express 10/03 release.

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

This feature aids in the code conversion. It provids the conversion API with various supported option arguments, a dedicated IDN encoding conversion utility, and iconv code conversions. See the following man pages for detail:

• libidnkit(3LIB)

• idn_decodename(3EXT)

• idn_decodename2(3EXT)

• idn_encodename(3EXT)

• idnconv(1)

• iconv_en_US.UTF-8(5)

New iconv Code Conversions

This feature is included 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.

Standard Type Services Framework

This feature is included in the Solaris Express 9/03 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.

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

Additional Indic Scripts for Support in Unicode Locales

This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

In addition to the current support for Hindi, Oracle Solaris software supports the following Indic scripts:

• Bengali

• Gurmukhi

• Gujarati

• Tamil.

• Malayalam

• Telugu

• Kannada

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

HKSCS-2001 Support in Hong Kong Locales

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 Oracle Solaris Hong Kong locales: zh_HK.BIG5HK and zh_HK.UTF-8.