| Introduction: Internationalisation Resources |

Resources (see Resource index for further details) of three distinct kinds are required in order to have a fully internationalised implementation of the Sather language :-

- Compiled cultural specifications of the source files specified by ISO/IEC 14652 and ISO/IEC 14651
- Message files for classes having values which cannot be constructed in the way specified by the above standards (eg the class BOOL - requiring the values "True" and "False") and having the possibility of conversion to textual representation.
- Message files for classes which need to interact with the execution environment using text messages (which may contain for example numeric values or values as described above). These could be something as simple as error messages indicating faults or be some form of sophisticated natural language sentence generation/recognition system.

The term fully internationalised here means that programs written using the Required Library can operate without alteration in any culture or 'locale' for which a set of resources has been prepared and for which there is a compiled form of the two standard descriptions required for the culture concerned.

Where the local language used is English (using English rather than American spelling - which is the norm in New Zealand) then it will otherwise only be necessary to convert resource files using the code mapper (see the utilities introductory page) dependent on the local character encoding in use.

Where a cultural description does not exist then, of course, one which conforms to the appropriate standard will need to be prepared (generally in conjunction with national standards authorities). In any case it will be necessary to compile this using the lcc utility.

For each culture and language the Resource structure must conform to that of the distribution libraries - one sub-directory for each library - and so on! The directories should contain a file with the local equivalent of the name "lib_res". These files must have the format described here.

For any one computer system, it will only be necessary to have one version of the resource files - unless the machine can operate with multiple character encodings.

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Comments or enquiries should be made to Keith Hopper . Page last modified: Tuesday, 16 May 2000. |