Microsoft KB Archive/67196

Developing Localized Applications for the Far East ID Number: Q67196

2.00 2.03 2.10 3.00 MS-DOS ISVONLY | 2.x MSJ V3-2 Mar 88

Summary:

Windows is available in a number of localized versions to provide a standard set of services to application developers. One of these versions is specifically designed for the Japanese market and supports the Kanji and Katakana character sets. This article details some of the steps involved to develop software for use in the Japanese- language market.

More information:

The ASCII character set consists of 256 codes to represent symbols used in language. Each symbol is represented by one byte of information and many symbols are required to represent a word, a unit of information. Because the Kanji representation of Japanese employs one symbol to represent each word in the language, there are many more than 256 symbols required for communication.

Computer hardware and software manufactures have developed an extended version of the ASCII code that allows for the representation of far- eastern languages, such as Japanese. Computers have been developed that process and display information using these character sets.

To develop software for the Japanese market it is necessary to use appropriate hardware. Sanyo, Panasonic and Fujitsu are large manufactures of machines for the Japanese market and each has offices in the United States. One major computing standard in Japan is called the “AX” and is roughly parallel to the IBM-PC standard of the US.

It is also necessary to acquire Japanese versions of MS-DOS and Windows. These products are available from the hardware manufacturer. Microsoft sells all of its Kanji system products through hardware manufacturers (OEMs) and does not sell them directly to end-users.

Kanji Windows includes localized versions of the Windows tools, like Write and Notepad. These may be used for creating a resource file that contains the strings, menus, and other resources required for a Kanji application.

There are programming considerations involved when creating software for the Japanese market. The major change is to deal with both one- byte and two-byte characters. Windows provides string manipulation functions to determine if a character is alphabetic, numeric or neither and, if alphabetic, if the character is upper or lower case. Functions are also available to correctly move forward and backward through strings that may contain both one-byte and two-byte characters. These functions are listed in the “Windows Software Development Kit Reference, volume 1,” in section 3.7 on pages 3-8 and 3-9.

Additional information on creating software for the Japanese software market is available in the article titled “Bringing Windows to the Expanding Japanese Market,” from the March 1988 issue of the “Microsoft Systems Journal” (Vol. 3, No. 2).