Multilingual Computing
SIL contributions
These are some SIL contributions to research and development in the area of multilingual computing:
- The first requirement discussed in The Nature of Linguistic Data and the Requirements of a Computing Environment for Linguistic Research is that: "The data are multilingual, so the computing environment must be able to keep track of what language each datum is in, and then display and process it accordingly."
- Multilingual Data Processing in the CELLAR Environment describes six facets of multilingual computing and how SIL's CELLAR system supports each.
- Fonts in CyberSpace is SIL's guide to finding fonts on the Internet. Includes pointers to fonts for more than 40 non-Roman writing systems.
- Non-Roman Script Initiative facilitates the use of non-Roman and complex scripts in linguistic study, translation, literacy and publishing
Other resources
About multilingual computing in general:
- The journal Multilingual Communications and Technology is published six times a year. For information mail to info@multilingual.com.
- Knowledge Computing's Multilingual PC Directory
- Two-letter codes for the representation of names of languages (from ISO 639:1988).
Resources for software developers:
- Microsoft Developer Network Going Global
- Also from Microsoft: Multilanguage support in Windows
On developing a truly multilingual World Wide Web:
- The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) site on internationalization and localization: Non-western Character Sets, Languages, and Writing Systems
- Multilingualism and the Internet (from Worldwide Language Institute)
Character encoding and rendering
Fundamental to the problem of multilingual computing is the problem of character encoding and rendering. Below is a glossary of key terms that arise in this area; basic definitions are supplemented with pointers to further information resources.
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard character set that maps character codes 0 through 127 onto control functions, punctuation marks, digits, upper case letters, lower case letters, and other symbols.
ASCII file
A data file that contains only character codes in the range 0 to 127 and in which all the codes are to be interpreted by their significance in the ASCII standard.
base character
A character to which an overstriking diacritic is added.
character
The minimal unit of encoding for text files. A character typically corresponds to a single graphic sign of a writing system, like a letter of the alphabet or a punctuation mark.
character code
A numerical code in a data file which represents a particular character in text. For instance, in the ASCII standard, 65 represents upper-case A.
character set
The full set of character codes used for encoding a particular language or writing system (also known as, coded character set).
Some sources that discuss concepts and terminology:
- "Character Set" Considered Harmful, by Dan Connolly
- Character Sets and Codepages in Windows
These sources describe the contents of particular character sets:
- Characters and character sets for various languages, by Harald Alvestrand, lists the characters needed by 46 (mostly European) languages and names character sets that contain them all.
collating sequence
The sorting order for all the characters in a character set.
composite character
A single character which is a composite of two or more other characters. For instance, à is a composite of a (the base character) and ` (a diacritic).
diacritic
A small mark (such as an accent mark) added above, below, before, or after a base character to modify its pronunciation or significance.
encoding
The manner in which information is represented in computer data files. Character encoding refers specifically to the codes used to represent characters. (See also text encoding.)
font
A collection of bitmaps or outlines which supply the graphic rendering of every character in a character set.
- Fonts in CyberSpace, SIL's guide to finding fonts on the Internet. Includes pointers to fonts for 44 non-Roman writing systems.
- Yamada Language Center (University of Oregon) non-English Font Archive
- Microsoft Typography Home Page explains how TrueType and OpenType fonts work.
font system
A subcomponent of an operating system which gives all programs and data files access to multiple fonts for rendering characters.
For instance,
- Fonts and Text (from Win32 Software Developers Kit documentation) explains the Windows font system. Keep turning pages to the right to first find definitions of the basic concepts and then see descriptions of the system functions that comprise the font system.
Rendering
The process of converting a stream of encoded characters (that is, character codes) to their correct graphic appearance on a terminal or printer.
The seminal work on encoding versus rendering is:
- Becker, Joseph D. (1984) ‘Multilingual word processing.’ Scientific American, 251(1):96-107.
special character
A character that is not available in one of the character sets already supported on a computer system.
Unicode
A character set which attempts to include every character from all the major writing systems of the world. It uses two bytes (16 bits) to encode each character. In its current version (2.0), the Unicode standard contains 38,885 distinct coded characters from 25 scripts (including the International Phonetic Alphabet).
See:
- The Unicode Consortium's Unicode Home Page.
- The book for the Unicode Standard is: The Unicode Standard, Worldwide Character Encoding, Version 2.0, 1996. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-48345-9.
- The Unicode Standard (gives general information and describes basic principles)
- A list of all the characters in the Unicode set as SGML entities (but without pictures of sample glyphs).
WorldScript
A subcomponent of the Macintosh operating system (version 7.1 and later) which gives programs access to script interface systems for multiple non-Roman writing systems.
Some relevant publications:
- Davis, Mark E. (1987) ‘The Macintosh script system.’ Newsletter for Asian and Middle Eastern Languages on Computer, 2(1&2):9-24.