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Common Desktop Environment: Internationalization Programmer's Guide

Preface

The Common Desktop Environment: Internationalization Programmer's Guide provides information for internationalizating the desktop, enabling applications to support various languages and cultural conventions in a consistent user interface.

Specifically, this guide:

This guide is not intended to duplicate the existing reference or conceptual documentation but rather to provide guidelines and conventions on specific internationalization topics. This document focuses on internationalization topics and not on any specific component or layer in an open software environment.

Who Should Use This Book

This book provides various levels of information for the application programmer and developer and related fields.

How This Book Is Organized

Explanations of the contents of this book follow:

Chapter 1, Introduction to Internationalization provides an overview of internationalization and localizing within the desktop, including locales, fonts, drawing, inputting, interclient communication, and extracting user visual text. Information on the significance of internationalization standards is also provided.

Chapter 2, Internationalization and the Common Desktop Environment covers the set of topics that developers commonly need to consider when internationalizing their applications, including locale management, localized resources, font management, localized text tasks, interclient communication for localized text, and internationalized functions.

Chapter 3, Internationalization and Distributed Networks discusses topics related to handling encoded characters in distributed networks. Basic principles and examples for interclient interoperability are provided to guide developers in internationalized distributed environments.

Chapter 4, Motif Dependencies topics include internationalized applicaitons, locale management, localized text, international User Interface Language (UIL), and localized applications.

Chapter 5, Xt and Xlib Dependencies topics include locale management, localized text tasks, font set metrics, interclient communications conventions for localized text, and charset and font set encoding and registry information.

Appendix A, Message Guidelines is a set of guidelines for writing messages.

Related Publications

See the following documentation for additional information on topics presented in this book:

Ordering Sun Documents

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For a list of documents and how to order them, visit the Sun Documentation Center on Fatbrain.com at http://www1.fatbrain.com/documentation/sun.

Accessing Sun Documentation Online

The docs.sun.comSM Web site enables you to access Sun technical documentation online. You can browse the docs.sun.com archive or search for a specific book title or subject. The URL is http://docs.sun.com.

What Typographic Conventions Mean

The following table describes the typographic changes used in this book.

Table P-1 Typographic Conventions

Typeface or Symbol 

Meaning 

Example 

AaBbCc123

 The names of commands, files, and directories; on-screen computer output

Edit your .login file.

Use ls -a to list all files.

machine_name% you have mail.

AaBbCc123

 What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer outputmachine_name% su Password:

AaBbCc123

 Command-line placeholder: replace with a real name or value

To delete a file, type rm filename.

AaBbCc123

Book titles, new words, or terms, or words to be emphasized. 

Read Chapter 6 in User's Guide.

These are called class options.

You must be root to do this.

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default system prompt and superuser prompt for the C shell, Bourne shell, and Korn shell.

Table P-2 Shell Prompts

Shell 

Prompt 
 C shell promptmachine_name%
 C shell superuser promptmachine_name#
 Bourne shell and Korn shell prompt$
 Bourne shell and Korn shell superuser prompt#