Internationalization Standards

Through the work of many companies, the functionality of the internationalization application program interface has been standardized over time to include additional requirements and languages, particularly those of East Asia. This work has been centered primarily in the Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments (POSIX) and X/Open specifications. The original X/Open specification was published in the second edition of the X/Open Portability Guide (XPG2) and was based on the Native Language Support product released by Hewlett-Packard. The latest published X/Open internationalization standard is referred to as XPG4.

It is important that each layer within the desktop use the proper set of standards interfaces defined for internationalization to ensure end users get a consistent, localized interface. The definition of a locale and the common open set of locale-dependent functions are based on the following specifications:

• X Window System, The Complete Reference to Xlib, Xprotocol, ICCCM, XLFD - X Version, Release 5, Digital Press, 1992, ISBN 1-55558-088-2.

• ANSI/IEEE Standard Portable Operating System Interface for Computer Environments, IEEE.

• OSF^TM Motif 1.2 Programmer' Reference, Revision 1.2, Open Software Foundation, Prentice Hall, 1992, ISBN 0-13-643115-1.

• X/Open CAE Specification Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, X/Open Company Ltd., 1992, ISBN 1-872630-48-0.

Within this environment, software developers can expect to develop worldwide applications that are portable, can interoperate across distributed systems (even from different vendors), and can meet the diverse language and cultural requirements of multinational users supported by the desktop standard locales.