The main standards for characters in computers are ASCII and EBCDIC. Problem with these two sets is that they don't support non-english based languages like roman based languages (French, Spanish) and languages that use different characters (Greek, Chinese, Arabic) For these kind of languages UniCode is designed.
ASCII is a 7 bits code which can contain 128 characters. The first 32 characters of ASCII are used for controlling terminal sessions.
EBCDIC uses 8 bits to represent characters which offer 256 characters.
Unicode is based on ISO 10646 and uses 16 bits to define a character, this offers 65536 different characters. This character set contains all characters of the various languages and is the default character set of Windows 2000. Documents that use another character set are translated into Unicode.
Windows 2000 offers a bi-directional application programming interface to display text from right-to-left if required by the language. The API is also called the Right-To-Left (RTL) API. If you need right-to-left support, an application should use this API or provide a version for these languages requiring it.
Windows 2000 offers 24 different versions of Windows 2000 Professional that allow users to interact with the Windows User Interface in their own native language. If the version of Windows 2000 Professional you are using supports your language, dialog boxes, help files, and parts of the application will all be displayed in the user's language. There is also a Multilanguage version that contains the user interface for all 24 supported languages
Locales allow users to interact and share data with other users in other countries. A Locale is a set of user preferences relating to a user's language, environment, and cultural settings. The Locales available on a Windows 2000 Professional system are based on the Language groups installed.
A Language Group is a collection of settings that determine which keyboard
layout, font, Input Method Editor (IME), and National Language Support (*.nls)
files are used. It provides all of the necessary files and supporting components
that enable a list of available Locales to be generated and chosen from. A
particular Language Group must be installed in order to use the corresponding
Locale. Language Groups can be installed via the Language options of the
Regional options applet of the control panel. You can installed a default
language group and optional language groups.
The IME is an interface that provides the input to applications. Normally this
is the keyboard that talks to the IME but it can also be a voice interface.
There are three types of locales :
| User locales. User locales determine the format of dates, times, numbers, and currency. This setting is per user and can be changed without a reboot. |
| Input Locales. Input locales are connected to the various EMI. They control how the system maps the language used to a input device. This option allows a keyboard from one languages and a speech-to-text connection in another language. The input locale must be in of the installed language groups. Input locales are per user and can be changed without a reboot. |
| System locales. System Locales are used to determine which
character set and font files will be used on the system. The default System
Locale is Unicode based. This option can be used if you have to use
non-Unicode based applications. This settings is system based, not per user.
It can only be changed by administrators and does require a reboot. |
You can set user and system locales via group policy and the Control Panel applet Regional options. The applet contains the following tabs :
| General. This tabs shows the default locale and the locales installed. You can also install additional locales. If installing an additional locale, a reboot is required. |
| Numbers. At this tab you can set the display format of numbers. The options available are based on the default locale on the general tab. |
| Currency. At this tab you can set the way currencies are displayed. Part of the variables are the same as the numbers tab. The options available are based on the default locale on the general tab. |
| Time. At this tab you can set the way the time is displayed. The options available are based on the default locale on the general tab. Date. At this tab you can set the way the date is displayed The options available are based on the default locale on the general tab. The tab also offers conversion options from the Julian calendar. |
| Input locales. Allows you to connect a language to the keyboard
IME, display an icon in the taskbar, set how to turn of caps lock (caps lock
or shift) and define hotkeys to switch between keyboards. By default
left-Alt - Shift is used to switch input locales. |
Last update : 30 December 2000