Chapter 1 Introduction

Design of the Simplified Chinese Solaris Software

This software is a Simplified Chinese localization of the Sun^TM Solaris operating environment. The Simplified Chinese Solaris software includes the Simplified Chinese Common Desktop Environment (CDE) for windowed applications that are built on Sun's Solaris operating environment.

Simplified Chinese Solaris software is an extension of base Solaris software. Virtually all utilities and features of the U.S. and International Solaris standard releases are incorporated in Simplified Chinese Solaris software. These products introduce Solaris input methods for the input and output of Simplified Chinese. Application programs and CDE use the features of Simplified Chinese CDE to communicate with users in Simplified Chinese.

This Simplified Chinese localization of Sun's internationalized CDE includes enhancements for handling appropriate linguistic and cultural conventions, which it provides to two broad working environments:

• A localized user environment, which includes localized desktop tools and window manager (dtwm) that communicate with users in Simplified Chinese.

• A localized development environment, which programmers use to develop localized applications, with Xlib and Motif, which have been internationalized for this use. Programmer and developers should refer to International Language Environments Guide.

Simplified Chinese Graphical User Interface

This Simplified Chinese Solaris release uses the Simplified Chinese CDE Motif graphical user interface, which is similar in layout and design to the U.S. release of CDE. Simplified Chinese CDE supports multibyte characters and Simplified Chinese messages with Motif objects. Differences in character width and proportional spacing cause minor differences in the exact layout of some Motif objects.

All application windows that accept Simplified Chinese input include a status area associated with their input window to show the current conversion mode. With an input conversion mode on, as Simplified Chinese is being typed its entry point becomes a highlighted (reverse video) preedit area until the input is converted to Simplified Chinese or special characters and committed. Some input modes also provide conversion choices (candidates) among several Simplified Chinese characters on menus.

Simplified Chinese Input/Output

To accommodate the diversity of Simplified Chinese, this Solaris software provides several different input methods for entering Simplified Chinese characters. With these methods you can type ASCII/English characters, Simplified Chinese radicals, and Simplified Chinese characters using an ASCII keyboard.

Simplified Chinese input from the keyboard is stored temporarily in an intermediate representation. The conversion manager program, with the help of user interaction, then transforms this intermediate representation into a displayed character string.

The Localized CDE Desktop

The following desktop tools are provided in this Solaris release. Each tool can accept and display Simplified Chinese text. A manual page is provided for each.

• Address Manager - Carries out remote operations and finds information about the systems and users on your network. Can speed up such tasks as sending email, logging in remotely, and setting appointments on someone else's calendar.

• App Manager - Contains the applications available on your system. You can launch these applications through the App Manager interface.

• Audio Tool - Tool for recording, playing, editing, and controlling workstation audio parameters.

• Calculator - Visual calculator for use with mouse or keyboard.

• Calendar Manager - Manages business and social appointments; can use electronic mail to send automatic reminders.

• Clock - Displays current analog or digital time.

• Console - Standard Motif scrolling window terminal emulator.

• File Finder - Tool for searching for a folder and subfolders that returns a list of files or folders that match your search criteria. You can also specify the size, owner, date modified, type, and permissions in your search criteria.

• File Manager - Graphical tool for accessing files and directories. Represents file types with varying colors and icons. Navigates through the file system with the mouse.

• Help - On-line searchable help for CDE.

• Icon Editor - Visual tool for editing icon appearance and creating new icons.

• Image Tool - Interactive image viewer. Image Tool can be used to view the contents of file types such as GIF, TIFF, JPEG, PostScript, and others.

• Mailer - Tool for handling electronic mail.

• Performance Meter - Real-time system performance meter that can display a variety of data.

• Print Manager - Graphical front-end to the print command. It supports drag-and-drop file transfer operations.

• Process Manager - Tool for displaying and performing actions on the processes that are currently running on your workstation.

• Snapshot - Tool to snap or capture picture of a window or region of a screen in a bitmap (raster file). Used for capturing screen image displays in this user's guide.

• Text Editor - Visual text editor used in CDE tools such as the Mailer composition window.

• Style Manager - Tool for setting workstation preferences, such as audio feedback from keyboard, mouse response, and so on.

• Terminal - Standard Motif window terminal emulator. The window behaves like an ASCII character terminal for entry of UNIX® commands at a system shell prompt and other terminal operations.