1 / 27

Open-Source Approaches to Unicode Enablement

Open-Source Approaches to Unicode Enablement. Panel Discussion. Agenda. Panel Introductions Library Descriptions and Demos What is Open Source? What is the Open Source experience? Q and A. Frank Tang Helena Shih Ulrich Drepper Tex Texin. Netscape ICU glibc Moderator. Today’s Panel.

kedem
Download Presentation

Open-Source Approaches to Unicode Enablement

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Open-Source Approaches to Unicode Enablement Panel Discussion

  2. Agenda • Panel Introductions • Library Descriptions and Demos • What is Open Source? • What is the Open Source experience? • Q and A San Jose, California, September 2000

  3. Frank Tang Helena Shih Ulrich Drepper Tex Texin Netscape ICU glibc Moderator Today’s Panel San Jose, California, September 2000

  4. Library Descriptions and Demos • GNU libc http://sourceware.cygnus.com/glibc • Mozilla: International Library of Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org/projects/intl • IBM: International Components for Unicode http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu San Jose, California, September 2000

  5. International Library for Mozilla Frank Tang Netscape Communications Mozilla

  6. GNU Libc Ulrich Drepper GNU, RedHat

  7. GNU libc • Library supporting multibyte and wide characters • localedef tool allows definition of locales for any charsets, including UTF8, UCS2 • using charset requires just a description and a conversion module • Wide character is UCS-4, native byte order San Jose, California, September 2000

  8. GNU libc conversion functions • iconv() implementation is unique • Conversions are transitive A to C = A to B to C • In most cases, UCS-4 is used as common denominator San Jose, California, September 2000

  9. Licensing & Development Process • RedHat is completely open source. • Code is licensed as LGPL, assigned to Free Software Foundation (FSF) • This is the same method as GNU • Small teams of developers with a “dictatorial decision maker”. • Comments accepted, taken into account • Extensive peer reviewing San Jose, California, September 2000

  10. International Components for Unicode (ICU) Helena Shih IBM Unicode Technology Center

  11. Unicode support in the Industry • Lack of a complete set of features in most implementations. • Inconsistent across different environments. Win32 vs. POSIX, for example. • Poor portability. • Unable to share the resources with other products. • Almost no extensibility and customization. • Not a concern for most companies when a product is first designed. San Jose, California, September 2000

  12. Netfinity Server ICU Apple G3 Macintosh ICU IBM’s DB/2 Product AS/400 e-Server 720 Microsoft NT Workstation World Wide Web Sun Ultra 60 Workstation S/390 Server San Jose, California, September 2000

  13. ICU Objectives • Single release for world-wide distribution • Quality Unicode & I18N support across platforms • Simplified development localization process • Consistent results in both C/C++ and Java • Powerful, portable API available to the Open-Source development community • Important resources sharing mechanism San Jose, California, September 2000

  14. ICU Features • Parallel to the i18n architecture in JDK • All components multi-thread safe • Full Unicode string manipulation • Complete locale support, e.g. > 145 locales • Fast and flexible character set conversion • Efficient data loading mechanism San Jose, California, September 2000

  15. ICU Features • Hierarchical resource bundles with flexible data storage mechanism • Extensive calendar and timezone support • Date, time, currency, number and message formatting • Locale sensitive sorting (including Thai) • Locale sensitive text boundary detection San Jose, California, September 2000

  16. ICU Features • Customizable transliteration interface • Unicode text compression algorithm • Fast and compliant Unicode 3.0 Bidi algorithm • Most up-to-date Unicode 3.0 support (including Normalization) • All APIs support UTF-16 • Partnership insures balanced viewpoints and practical solutions San Jose, California, September 2000

  17. ICU4J - ICU for Java • IBM developed extensive I18N library • I18N code added to Java JDK 1.1 • Java code ported to C++ -> ICU • ICU available on alphaWorks • Both ICU and Java classes continue development • Sometimes “leapfrogging” each other with features • ICU open source, moves to developerWorks • 2000 March: Java Code open source as “ICU4J” San Jose, California, September 2000

  18. ICU4J Features • Builds on Java 2 feature set • Feature summary: • Advanced text boundary detection • Calendars: Hebrew, Hijri/Islamic, Japanese Gengou, Thai Buddhist • Spelled-out numbers • Normalization • Transliteration • Standard Unicode compression San Jose, California, September 2000

  19. Demos • Locale Explorer • glibc San Jose, California, September 2000

  20. Agenda • Panel Introductions • Library Descriptions and Demos • What is Open Source? • What is the Open Source experience? • Q and A San Jose, California, September 2000

  21. ICU OpenSource Objectives • De facto industry standard for Unicode support • Pervasive globalization technologies • Mature globalization technologies for customers • Support for other important OpenSource products: Linux, Apache, Mozilla, XML etc. San Jose, California, September 2000

  22. Open-Source Models • The Apache model • Web access for CVS repository • Technical committees • Developer community support • icu@oss.software.ibm.com etc. mailing lists • Commercial product partnership • RealNames, versant, GE ... San Jose, California, September 2000

  23. Why contribute to Open Source? • Requires robust I18n and portability • Implementing alone, cost is considerable • Sharing development is cost effective • Shared knowledge with experts • Ability to influence the end-result San Jose, California, September 2000

  24. Why contribute to Open Source? • Provide portability and interoperability • Going to Unicode 3.0 is a sizable effort • Commercial libraries insufficient • Shared effort means our development focus is now aligned with our needs • Share expertise, Give something • Source access-Education, Self-reliance San Jose, California, September 2000

  25. Why contribute to Open Source? • Concerns: • Giving away proprietary technology • Design by committee • Will release schedules fit product schedules? • Will library and product stay in synch? • Do all participants have common objectives? San Jose, California, September 2000

  26. Why contribute to Open Source? • Concerns: • Management Perceptions “If it’s free, it must be for play…” • Entry requirements and qualifications to be able to affect direction or design • Patch integration, Release control and schedules • Build stability San Jose, California, September 2000

  27. Agenda • Panel Introductions • Library Descriptions and Demos • What is Open Source? • What is the Open Source experience? • Q and A San Jose, California, September 2000

More Related