About the Macintosh Script Systems
- Related Worldwide Components
- Installing and Removing Script Systems
- About Worldwide Software
- Overview of the Script Manager Routines
- About the Macintosh Script Systems
- Using the Keyboard Menu
- Distinguishing Scripts
- The Keyboard
- About Fonts
- Localization
- Sorting
- Checking and Modifying Script Manager Global and Local Variables
- Accepting Implicit Script Codes
- Verbs for GetScript and SetScript
- Verbs for GetEnvirons and SetEnvirons
- Setting and Checking System Variables
- Setting the Active Keyboard Script
- Obtaining Script Information
- Manipulating Text
- Date and Time Utilities
- Number Utilities
- Localizing Word Selection and Line Break Tables
In many cases, the versatility provided by script systems allows applications
to be localized for other scripts, languages, and regions with no change to their
program code. (Script systems are typically localized for a language and region
that belong to the script; this affects the formatting of dates, times, numbers,
and so on.) Multiple script systems can be installed at one time on a Macintosh
computer allowing the user to switch back and forth between different scripts.
With system software version 7.0, users can change the active keyboard script
by using the Keyboard menu. The menu is present whenever multiple scripts
are installed or when a localizer sets a flag in the script's 'itlc' resource.
When the Keyboard menu is present, an icon indicating the presence of the menu
and the active keyboard (and hence the active script) appears near the right
end of the menu bar to the left of the Application menu icon. See the section
The Figure below shows the types of script systems currently available. The
Roman and Cyrillic Script Systems are relatively straightforward. These
simple script systems represent writing systems with small character
sets that require only single-byte characters, have a text direction of left to
right, and are not context-dependent. Such script systems provide for basic
differences between scripts and related languages, such as character sets,
fonts, keyboards, text collation, and word breaking. The Roman Script System
is standard on all Macintosh computers, and the standard Roman character set
includes characters for a number of European languages.
Types of script systems
The other script systems represent some of the most complex modern writing
systems and go far beyond basic script support. Japanese, Chinese, and Korean
have exceedingly large character sets, and these script systems have
comprehensive procedures for character input. These multibyte script
systems have character sets that are too large to be represented with single
bytes (the character set includes both single-byte and double-byte character
codes) and require an independent font mechanism for display and printing.
Arabic and Hebrew are bidirectional script systems, where text is
generally flush right and is written from right to left, but also includes
characters that are written left to right.
Contextual script systems are scripts where the displayed form of a
character depends on the adjacent characters. Arabic and Urdu are examples of
contextual script systems.
Each script system determines the components for the script: character
encoding; fonts; input methods; sorting; date, time, and number formats; and
script-specific access routines. For example, each script's composition rules
support all of the necessary features of the script: direction, conjunct
characters, accent placement, and so forth. For further details on Macintosh
script systems, see Macintosh Worldwide Development: Guide to System
Many script systems also have a control panel or a desk accessory to allow the
user to configure the individual characteristics of the script system at any
time. (Simple script systems do not generally have such a control panel.)
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