About the Script Management System
About the Script Management System
The Script Management System consists of the Script Manager and one or
more script systems. Related components of worldwide system software include
the International Utilities Package, the international resources, the
keyboard resources, and keyboard-handling routines.
At the center of the worldwide system software, the
Script Manager allows different script systems to be installed, maintains
global data structures, supports switching keyboards between different
scripts, supplies several utility routines itself, and provides a standard
interface for programmatic access to script systems. The
Script Manager routines allow you to write your application independently
of the particular script in use. Since the Roman Script System is always
installed in conjunction with the Script Manager, you can use these
routines with the Roman Script System for text manipulation.
The Script Manager provides basic capability in each of the scripts and
languages that it supports. Although TextEdit provides text-handling support
when rudimentary text-handling support is adequate, you will
find the Script Manager useful when your applications have no special
knowledge of the particular script or language with which they are dealing.
Applications requiring a medium level of text-handling support should
use the Script Manager if they are targeted for non-Roman scripts and
multiple countries. Sophisticated text-intensive applications targeted to a
particular language or script may need to go beyond the capabilities of
the Script Manager.
Currently, script systems are available for the Roman, Japanese, Arabic,
Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Thai, and Korean
scripts as well as for most scripts of India and Bangladesh, including
Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, and others. These script systems
supply fonts, ways to represent various keyboards, text collation, word
breaks, and the formatting of dates, times, and numbers. Some of these script
systems include special routines for handling exceedingly large character sets,
which have comprehensive procedures for character input, and for handling
bidirectional or contextual text. See Representing Scripts on the Macintosh for
more information.