Tru64 UNIX worldwide language support

Internationalization features

The Tru64 UNIX internationalization environment, tools, and localization features enable you to develop and execute internationalized software without re-engineering the user application.

The Tru64 UNIX internationalization features conform to The Open Group's CAE specifications for system interfaces and headers (XSH Issue 5), curses (XCURSES Issue 4.2), and commands and utilities (XCU Issue 5). These specifications align with current POSIX and ISO C standards. The operating system also supports the X Input and Output Methods (XIM and XOM), with functions implemented according to X11R6 specification.

Tru64 UNIX Version 5.1A conforms to the Chinese Character Input Standard GB18030-2000, which went into effect on September 1, 2001.

Internationalization features are included as part of the base operating system installation or with installation of the optional Worldwide Language Support subsets. The following lists some of the more important internationalization features offered with Tru64 UNIX. For a complete description of features, see the Internationalization chapter of the Tru64 UNIX Technical Overview. For a full description of the Tru64 UNIX implementation of these features, see Writing Software for the International Market and the language-specific Technical Reference Guides on the Tru64 UNIX Programming Documentation bookshelf.

• 32-bit wide character support

• XPG4 Worldwide Portability Interfaces (WPI)

• Multibyte Support Extensions (MSE) of the ISO C standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990/Amendment 1:1994(E))

• Internationalized commands, such as support for the asort utility that allows sorting of ideogrammatic languages

• Internationalized X/Open Curses library (libcurses)

• Iconv library (libiconv, an International Codeset Conversion Library)

• Locale utilities, including locale creation

• Date, time, currency, and numeric formats in the native languages

• Character classification (isupper, islower, iscntrl, is* functions) and support for Asian user defined characters

• Collation — Character sort order of the codeset

• Yes and No response in the native language

• Fonts for supported character sets

• TTY drivers support for various input functions for native languages, including support for BSD line disciplines and STREAMS terminal drivers for processing Asian languages

• Translated CDE and Motif user interface

• Keymaps for local keyboards

• Support for all language variants using the North American keyboard

• Input method support for Hebrew and Asian languages

• Printing in the native languages

Supported languages, locales, and character sets

Locale names that include @ucs4 and UTF-8 support characters encoded as defined by the ISO 10646 standard and the Unicode Standard. Characters are processed internally using a 32-bit wchar_t data type. In addition, for @ucs4 locales, data is in UCS-4 form (also known as UTF-32). 

The first 256 values of ISO 10646 and the Unicode Standard contain the same characters as are contained in the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set. In all ISO 8859-1 locales, characters are zero-padded to 32 bits in wchar_t and so are identical to the UCS-4 process code. ISO 8859-1 locales differ from UTF-8 locales with the same base name in terms of data file encoding. 

UTF-8 and Latin-9 (ISO 8859-15) locales support the euro currency symbol.

To install all of these locales, you must install the optional Worldwide Language Support subset as well as the base operating system.

Some locale names have one or more @modifier suffixes. A locale with the suffix @ucs4 is for use by applications that require internal process code to be in UCS-4 format. See the Unicode.5 reference page for more information on UCS-4. The English locale names that include cp850 support character encoding in PC code-page format.

For the most up-to-date list of supported languages and locales, refer to the l10n_intro.5 reference page.

European, Middle Eastern, and North American locales

Asian locales

Standard and nonstandard codeset support

Unicode support

Tru64 UNIX supports the Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 and ISO 10646 standards through a set of UCS-4 and UTF-8 based locales. Codeset conversion capability among UCS-4 (UTF-32), UCS-2 (UTF-16) and UTF-8 formats is provided for all supported codesets. Conversion support between Unicode and a number of single-byte PC code pages and from those PC code pages to the ISO Latin codeset is provided. For more information on the Unicode locales, see the operating system reference page, Unicode(5).

Euro currency support

Tru64 UNIX supports the euro currency symbol. Locales that use the UTF-8 or Latin-9 (ISO 8859-15) codesets support the euro characters while locales with a @euro suffix define the local currency sign to be the euro character. The locale, en_EU.UTF-8@euro, is an English locale providing support for the euro symbol, decimal as comma, and period as thousands separator. Printer support for the euro character is enabled by a generic PostScript print filter (wwpsof). Keyboard entry of the euro character is supported by key sequences defined in keymaps and through use of the Compose key. Also, codeset converters convert file data between the various encoding formats that support the euro character. See the operating system euro(5) and wwpsof(8) reference pages for more information.

Japanese input system for Tru64 UNIX

Tru64 UNIX provides a Japanese input system called 'dxjim', as a part of the operating system. It is an essential component for users to input Japanese characters (Kana and Kanji).

The 'dxjim' input system works only on Tru64 UNIX and Japanese ULTRIX. For users accustomed to PC-type input systems and want to use a similar Japanese input system on Tru64 UNIX, the following two Japanese input systems are provided:

• WX3 (for Tru64 UNIX)

• VJE-Gamma (for Tru64 UNIX)

WX3 and VJE for Tru64 UNIX are products developed by Independent Software Vendors in Japan (A.I.Soft Inc. and VACS Corp. respectively), and are popular in the PC world.