Language Support

The Solaris environment builds inherent internationalization features into every localized product. Localization facilities support the ANSI C recommendations for internationalization and localization that define the locale and related categories.

Locales

A locale contains the language with culturally specific information and conventions for a particular global region. Each process in the Solaris operating environment has the following set of locale attributes:

• Locale settings, which provide the locale and setlocale commands you use to list and set attributes before you start a process from the command line.

  For example, the Simplified Chinese locales and the English/ASCII locale both have a category that defines the display of time and date according to the cultural format, as well as the actual Simplified Chinese or English/ASCII characters for the time and date.

• Codesets, which support coding conventions for the GB2312 and the GB18030 character sets. These sets enable you to input, display, and print Simplified Chinese text in file names, system messages, and terminal (TTY), email, and data file content.

• htt input method server, which handles Simplified Chinese input for the Solaris operating environment. The htt server receives your keyboard input and converts it to Simplified Chinese characters that are used in Simplified Chinese applications.

Simplified Chinese Locales

The Simplified Chinese Solaris operating environment provides simultaneous support for the locales in the following table. The locales look the same to the end user, but the internal character encoding is different.

Table 1-1 Simplied Chinese Locales

Locale	Description
zh_CN.EUC (zh)	Simplified Chinese EUC (GB2312)
zh_CN.GBK (zh.GBK)	Simplified Chinese GBK
zh_CN.GB18030	Simplified Chinese GB18030-2000
zh_CN.UTF-8 (zh.UTF-8)	Simplified Chinese UTF-8 (Unicode 3.1)

Simplified Chinese Codesets

The following table lists supported codesets for each Simplified Chinese locale.

Table 1-2 Simplied Chinese Codesets

Locale	Codeset
zh_CN.EUC (zh)	gb2312
zh_CN.GBK (zh.GBK)	GBK
zh_CN.GB18030	GB18030
zh_CN.UTF-8 (zh-UTF-8)	UTF-8

Simplified Chinese Input Methods and Fonts

The Simplified Chinese Solaris environment provides input methods and fonts which allow you to input, display, and print any character in any language. The following input methods are supported for the Simplified Chinese locales:

• New QuanPin

• New ShuangPin

• NeiMa

• QuanPin

• ShuangPin

• English-Chinese

• Codetable Input Methods

For a complete list of fonts supported for the Simplified Chinese locales, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Input Method Auxiliary Window

The input method auxiliary window supports the following new functions:

• Input method switching

• Input methods properties configuration

• Lookup tables for the following character sets:

  • GB2312

  • GBK

  • GB18030-2000

  • Unicode

• User-defined characters

• Input method help

• Virtual keyboard

Locale Categories

In the Simplified Chinese Solaris 9 operating environment, you can use the following general and specific categories as defined by ANSI C for the Simplified Chinese and English locales.

• General LC_ALL setting that invokes all of the categories for locale-related aspects of the environment.

• Specific settings for particular aspects of the environment which include:

  • LC_CTYPE

  • LC_TIME

  • LC_NUMERIC

  • LC_MONETARY

  • LC_COLLATE

  • LC_MESSAGES

For example, the Simplified Chinese and the English/ASCII locales have the LC_TIME category that defines the display of the time and date according to the cultural format, as well as the actual Simplified Chinese or English/ASCII characters used in the display.