Elements of internationalization

The typical elements of cultural environment are as follows:

Native language

The text that the executing program uses to communicate with a user or environment, that is, the natural language of the end user.

Character sets and coded character sets

Map an alphabet, the characters used in a particular language, onto the set of hexadecimal values (code points) that uniquely identify each character. This mapping creates the coded character set, which is uniquely identified by the character set it encodes, the set of code point values, and the mapping between these two.

For example IBM-273, also known as the German Code Page, and IBM-297, also known as the French Code Page, are two coded character sets which assign different EBCDIC encodings in the hexadecimal range 40 to FE to the same Latin Alphabet Number 1. IBM S/390® systems in Germany and France both use this Latin 1 alphabet, which is specified by International Standard ISO/IEC 8859-1. However, systems in Germany are configured for encodings of this alphabet given by IBM-273; whereas, systems in France are configured for encodings of this alphabet given by IBM-297.

IBM-1027, Japanese Latin Code Page, is another example of a coded character set. It assigns EBCDIC encodings in the hexadecimal range 40 to FE to characters specified by Japanese Industrial Standard JIS X 201-1978 plus encodings for a few more Latin characters selected by IBM. The resulting alphabet defined by IBM-1027 consists of some characters found in Latin Alphabet Number 1 and some Katakana characters. IBM S/390 systems in Japan are configured for encodings of this alphabet assigned by IBM-1027.

Collating and ordering

The relative ordering of characters used for sorting.

Character classification

Determines the type of character (alphabetic, numeric, and so forth) represented by a code point.

Character case conversion

Defines the mapping between uppercase and lowercase characters within a single character set.

Date and time format

Defines the way date and time data are formatted (names of weekdays and months; order of month, day, and year, and so forth).

Format of numeric and non-numeric numbers

Define the way numbers and monetary units are formatted with commas, decimal points, and so forth.