6
Multi-byte Character Support

This document describes multi-byte character support in Wireless Edition. Each section of this document presents a different topic. These sections include:

• Section 6.1, "Overview"

• Section 6.2, "Multi-byte Encoding Schemes"

• Section 6.3, "Setting the Multi-Byte Encoding for the Personalization Portal"

• Section 6.4, "Setting up a Netscape Browser to Display Multi-byte Data"

• Section 6.5, "LocalStrings.properties Files and Localization"

Important: In this document: WE_HOME is the directory in which Wireless Edition is installed followed by the "panama" sub-directory. For example: c:\ias10210\panama (Windows NT) /private/ias10210/panama (UNIX) Replace "WE_HOME" with the fully-qualified directory path. ORACLE_HOME is the directory in which Oracle9i Application Server is installed.

6.1 Overview

This release of Wireless Edition supports single-byte, multi-byte, and fixed-width encoding schemes which are based on national, international, and vendor-specific standards.

If the character set is single byte, and that character set includes only composite characters, the number of characters and the number of bytes are the same. If the character set is multi-byte, there is generally no such correspondence between the number of characters and the number of bytes. A character can consist of one or more bytes, depending on the specific multi-byte encoding scheme.

A typical situation is when character elements are combined to form a single character. For example, in the Thai language, up to three separate character elements can be combined to form one character, and one Thai character would require up to 3 bytes when TH8TISASCII or another single-byte Thai character set is used. One Thai character would require up to 9 bytes when the UTF8 character set is used.

6.2 Multi-byte Encoding Schemes

Multi-byte encoding schemes are needed to support ideographic scripts used in Asian languages like Chinese or Japanese since these languages use thousands of characters. These schemes use either a fixed number of bytes to represent a character or a variable number of bytes per character.

6.2.1 Fixed-width Encoding Schemes

In a fixed-width Multi-byte encoding scheme, each character is represented by a fixed number of n bytes, where n is greater than or equal to two.

6.2.2 Variable-width Encoding Schemes

A variable-width encoding scheme uses one or more bytes to represent a single character. Some Multi-byte encoding schemes use certain bits to indicate the number of bytes that represent a character. For example, if two bytes is the maximum number of bytes used to represent a character, the most significant bit can be toggled to indicate whether that byte is part of a single-byte character or the first byte of a double-byte character. In other schemes, control codes differentiate single-byte from double-byte characters. Another possibility is that a shift-out code is used to indicate that the subsequent bytes are double-byte characters until a shift-in code is encountered.

6.3 Setting the Multi-Byte Encoding for the Personalization Portal

The Personalization Portal receives the encoding for the text of the site from the setting in the PAPZ logical device, which is in the repository. The default encoding is VTF-8, which can be used for both Western European and Asian languages. The portal sets the content for each page with the encoding specified by the logical device. To change the default encoding to multi-byte encoding click PAPZ under Logical Devices in the Service Designer and change the encoding for your particular language.

6.4 Setting up a Netscape Browser to Display Multi-byte Data

To set up a Netscape 4.6 web browser to display Multi-byte data:

1. Click Edit, Preference, Appearance, and Fonts.

2. Select Unicode in the For the Encoding field.

3. For example, for Chinese, select MS Song in the Variable Width Font field.

4. For example, for Chinese, select MS Song in the Fixed Width Font field.

5. Select the "Use my default fonts, overriding document-specified fonts" radio button.

6.5 LocalStrings.properties Files and Localization

Localization has been simplified through the use of a property file called LocalStrings.properties. This file contains text labels used by screens within various adapters and JSP pages.

6.5.1 Service Designer Localization

Modify the LocalStrings.properties file in the panama_pasm.zip file in the ORACLE_HOME\panama\tools\ServiceDesigner\lib directory.

6.5.2 Personalization Portal Localization

Modify the LocalStrings.properties file in the WE_HOME/server/classes/oracle/panama/adapter/webui directory.

6.5.3 Localization for LDAP, Mail Adapter, and Personalization from a Device

Localization text for these adapters can be found in LocalStrings.properties files in the WE_HOME/server/classes/oracle/panama/adapter directory. The sub-directories are specified.

Table 6-1 LocalStrings.properties Files Details

Location	Contents
/ldap/LocalStrings.properties	Text labels used by the LDAP adapter.
/mail/LocalStrings.properties	Text labels used by the Mail adapter.
/papzlite/LocalStrings.properties	Text labels used by the device interface to the Personalization Portal.