All Databases Inside Mac - Basic Toolbox

Worldwide Development

As you develop applications for worldwide markets, you need to consider

differences in scripts, languages, and regions. The Macintosh system software

presents one of the most flexible architectures for developing applications that

can support more than one script.

A script, such as Roman, Kanji, or Arabic, is a writing system for a human

language such as English, Japanese or Arabic. Scripts have different

characteristics; for example, they can differ in the direction in which their

characters and lines run and in the number of characters in their character

sets. The way in which you need to input, display, render, and edit text may

change depending on the script in use.

A script system is a collection of software facilities that provides for basic

differences between writing systems. Script systems include character sets,

fonts, keyboards, and routines for text collation and word breaks. Examples of

script systems are Roman, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Devanagari, and

Korean. A script system can also be localized for a particular language, region,

or country. For example, the Roman script system has been localized for

French, British, Italian, and U.S. users (among others). The system software

of all Macintosh computers includes the Roman script system. If another script

system is required, it is also customized for the particular language or region.

You can use the Script Management System to help you display text in the

correct format for various scripts.

Worldwide system software consists of the Macintosh Script Management

System (that is, the Script Manager and one or more Macintosh script

systems) and related components (International Utilities Package,

the international resources, and keyboard resources included).

Measurement systems often differ from country to country, as do currency,

sorting order, word boundaries, and the formatting of dates and times. The

International Utilities Package handles formats for the presentation of

numbers, currency, time, and dates in countries around the world. The

international resources and several of the keyboard resources also contain

region-specific or language-specific information, such as date and time

formats.

TextEdit also provides support for working with different script systems.

You can use TextEdit to let the user edit and display text in multiple scripts

and styles when a non-Roman script system is in use. TextEdit automatically

handles text with more than one script, style, and direction. For example,

TextEdit supports mixing English text (a left-to-right directional script)

with Arabic text (a right-to-left directional script) in the same line.

You should use resources to store text for menus, dialog boxes, and other

parts of the user interface of your application. This lets a translator localize

your application for a particular language, region, or country without

requiring modification of your code. In addition, by using routines provided by

the Macintosh Script Management System, you can write your application so

that it works independently of the particular script in use.

The Figure below shows a document created by an application that uses the

Macintosh Script Management System to support more than one script system.

Using multiple scripts in a single document

See the Worldwide Software Overview for an introduction to designing

your application for worldwide markets, and for guidelines related to

developing your application for use around the world see the section called

User Interface Guidelines . See TextEdit for information on using

TextEdit when a non-Roman script system is in use. Macintosh Worldwide

Development: Guide to System Software (available from APDA) provides a

complete description of all components of the worldwide system software,

including routines in the Script Manager.

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