Portable Layout Services: Context-dependent and Directional Text
Portable Layout Services:
Context-dependent and Directional Text
Copyright © 1997 The Open Group

Frontmatter


CAE Specification
Portable Layout Services: Context-dependent and Directional Text
X/Open Document Number: C616
ISBN: 1-85912-142-X


©February 1997, The Open Group All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.


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Preface

The Open Group

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This Document
This document is a CAE Specification (see above). It describes a set of portable functions for handling context-dependent and bidirectional text transformations as a logical extension to the existing POSIX locale model.
Structure
This document is structured as follows:
Intended Audience
This document is intended for system and application programmers who want to provide support for complex-text languages.
Typographical Conventions
The following typographical conventions are used throughout this document:

Trade Marks

Motif®, OSF/1®, and UNIX® are registered trademarks and the "X Device"TM; and The Open GroupTM; are trademarks of The Open Group.

Unicode is a trade mark of The Unicode Consortium, Inc.

Acknowledgements

The Open Group gratefully acknowledges the work of the authors of this document:
Israel Gidali (IBM Canada) John Gioia (IBM Canada) Frank Rojas (IBM Austin)

In addition many members of the Joint X/Open UniForum Internationalisation Group (XoJIG) have contributed by reviewing earlier drafts.

This document could not have been prepared without the considerable contribution of many. The functions defined for Complex-text Language Layout transformations can be seen as the product of the effort of the architects and developers of the traditional Bidirectional support and the emerging Unicode focus on directionality.

Special thanks go to Isai Scheinberg, Milos Lalovic and Mel Sher (IBM Canada), and to Mati Allouche (IBM Israel), for their contribution to the initial specifications of the "BIDI_HANDLE", the predecessor of LayoutObject. Their work laid the foundation for the Layout Values that are needed across all locales.

Khaled Sherif (IBM Egypt) and Ehud Nathan (IBM Israel) take most of the credit for the actual final specifications based on their BIDI support on AIX. Their insight and experience in development of BIDI software is the foundation for much of the specification. Much of the prototype and feasibility has been done by them and their respective teams in their countries.

The team led by Nelson Ng (SunSoft) and consisting of Ienup Sung (SunSoft), Shinobu Matsuzuka (SunSoft), Randy Hill (Sun) and Chookij Vanatham (CDG Systems Ltd.), is to be credited for the prototype work on the first Thai implementation of the Layout Services. The Thai prototype has provided valuable feedback regarding the implementation feasibility of the composite character support. Nelson Ng is to be credited also for the appendix describing the Dynamic Pluggable Interface of locale-specific Layout Services.

Frank Rojas is to be credited for his creative consolidation of previously divergent and fragmented ideas and for the foundation of the architectural concepts of Layout Object as published in a document called The LAYOUT Utility from which the suggested APIs and the LayoutObject originate.

In preparing the Layout Services sections, the complex-text languages overview and the LO_LTYPE, and in the editing of this proposal, Israel Gidali has relied upon information originating from a multitude of sources. Thanks go to:

Apisak Apiwathanokul, Ranat Thopunya and Jenwit Sriwiwattanangkoon (IBM Thailand) whose work was the main source used by the editor to compile the Thai Language section in the overview.

Seong Mook Kim (IBM Korea) for his enlightening information regarding the Korean writing system. Alexis Cheng (NLTC, IBM Canada) for his help with the syntax aspects of the modifiers.

Mike Feldman (Digital Equipment Corporation Israel), Nelson Ng (Sun), Ienup Sung (Sun), Ranya Abdel Rahman (IBM Egypt), Chun-Wan Lai (Digital Equipment Corporation Hong Kong), Chookij Vanatham (CDG Systems Limited), Eun Yoon Young (IBM Korea), Lisa Moore (IBM USA), Anuwat Phrukphicharn (HP Thailand) and Judy Chen (HP USA) for their very constructive suggestions.

John Gioia (IBM Canada) who has helped the editor through the esoteric alleys of UNIX and the C language and for his contributions to the clarification of the XPG implications and the preparation of the graphic images. Pini Schapira and Adiva Gera (IBM Israel) who started the initial effort to propose standard enhancements to accommodate the bidirectional transformations.

Zarko Cvijan, Dr. Hussein Kushki, Fred Bealle, Dr. Umamaheswaran V.S., Sheila Richardson, Anne Stilman, and Willy Rose from NLTC (IBM Canada), Taweesak Kositapan (IBM Thailand), Alaa Eddine M. Ghoneim, and Sherif El-Rafei (IBM Egypt), Mati Allouche and Ari Erev (IBM Israel) for their review and valuable comments on the drafts of the different components of the proposal.

And last, but not least, Carol Painting, former X/Open editor, who has done an excellent job in compiling, restructuring, editing, simplifying and moulding this document.

Referenced Documents

The following documents are referenced in this specification:

Distributed Internationalisation Services

Snapshot, December 1994, Distributed Internationalisation Services, Version 2 (ISBN: 1-85912-033-4, S308).

ECMA TR/53

European Computer Manufacturers Association, Handling of Bidirectional Texts, 2nd Edition - June 1992.

ISO/IEC 6429

ISO/IEC 6429:1992, Information Technology - Control Functions for Coded Character Sets.

ISO/IEC 10646

ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993, Information Technology - Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) - Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane.

Unicode

The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.1996.

wtt2.0

National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Computer with WTT Thai Language Draft Proposal (ISBN 974-7570-66-1).

X11R5 Xlib

CAE Specification, May 1995, Window Management (X11R5): X Lib - C Language Binding (ISBN: 1-85912-088-1, C508).

XSH, Issue 5

CAE Specification, January 1997, System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 5 (ISBN: 1-85912-181-0, C606).


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