Internationalization Bob Alcorn, Blackboard Inc.

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Internationalization Overview Internationalization (i18n) vs. Localization (l10n) Character sets, Character Encoding –Unicode, ISO –Pitfalls Blackboard Learning System™ Application Pack 2 Features Looking Ahead

I18N vs L10N I18N is the process of building the infrastructure to support multiple locales –String extraction –Data formatting –Character set encoding L10N is the process of enabling a locale –Providing resource bundles –Dependent on depth of i18n

Concepts Character - the smallest components of written language that have semantic value Glyphs – the shapes that characters can have when they are rendered or displayed –Not a one-to-one correspondence. E.g., Different fonts, ligatures –Not what we care about vis-à-vis I18N…

Concepts Character Sets –Collection of characters used to express a given written language, expressed as a numeric value –Kinda sorta language specific Character Set Encoding –Binary encoding for numeric values in a character set –Sometimes used interchangeably with character set… E.g., MIME type “text/html;charset=iso ”… the “character set” is ISO For our intents, we can treat them as synonymous.

Concepts Universal Character Set (UCS) –Unambiguous numeric value for every character in every language (more or less) –UCS can be unambiguously encoded with… UTF-16 UCS-2 (subset of UTF-16) UTF-8 Requires multi-byte encoding

Concepts Unambiguous encoding enables “co- existence” of several different languages in a single data stream –Single byte encodings require a “marker” to know that any given value (e.g., 64) is to be interpreted as a different character –Example: you couldn’t directly encode Hebrew and Cyrillic (with ISO and ISO , respectively) in the same database field.

Concepts The “ISO 8859 Planes” –Set of single byte encodings (256 UCS characters per encoding) –ISO-8859-X, where X = –Super set of 7-bit US-ASCII (values are identical) Windows encoding is NOT ISO –CP1252. Similar except for a control character range

The Pipeline Browser Application Server Database Server Internally Unicode. Handles translation from browser to database Dependent on database storage type (char, nchar) and various settings May see arbitrary text streams from servers. Posts in same encoding.

The Browser

The Application Server Internally Unicode (Java uses UTF-16 internally Java I/O APIs take encoding into consideration –Specifically java.io.Reader and java.io.Writer –Map bytes from HTTP input stream to characters

The Database CHAR vs. NCHAR –Single vs. multi-byte –CHAR can still be “internationalized” with different collations

What’s Wrong Here? String value = “problème”; socketStream.write( value.getBytes() ); byte[] byteBuf = new byte[1024]; int count = socketStream.read( byteBuf ); String value = new String( byteBuf, 0, count ); Client: Server:

What’s Wrong Here? File path = storeFileFromRequest(); FileReader fr = new FileReader( path ); char[] buf = new char[1024]; StringBuffer str = new StringBuffer(); while( fr.read( buf ) != -1 ) { str.append( buf ); }

Encodings and Transformations Problème Text ISO x50x72x6Fx62x6CxE8x6Dx65 byte[] bytes = value.getBytes() UTF-8 x50x72x6Fx62x6CxC3x6Dx65xA8 byte[] bytes = value.getBytes( “UTF-8” ) Reading UTF-8 as ISO ProblÃme¨ new String( bytes )

Encodings and Transformations Problème x50x72x6Fx62x6CxE8x6Dx65 Text UTF-16 (LE) Reading UTF-16 (LE) as ISO x00 Problème□□□□□□□□

Blackboard Academic Suite ™ Version 6, Application Pack 2 Internationalized! –Text extracted into locale-specific resource bundles –Application code uses locale settings for formatting (numbers, dates, names) –ISO only In theory, any 1-byte encoding could be used, but it is not being tested

Blackboard Academic Suite ™ Version 6, Application Pack 3 Internationalized! –Support multiple locales simultaneously –Per-course, Per user settings Blackboard Building Blocks™ view doesn’t change –Locale negotiation is still transparent

Blackboard Academic Suite ™ Release 7 Final Stage in internationalization –Full multi-byte support from browser to database –Multi-byte file name handling, independent of server file system –Localizable Blackboard Building Blocks manifests –“Language Pack Editor”

Application Pack 2 – Blackboard Building Blocks View What’s the current locale? Display this datum using current locale settings… Parse this datum using the current locale settings…

Making it Work Automatically handled through tag library HTTP Header: Content-type: text/html;charset=ISO HTML:

Making it Work If you’re not using the tag, you can still set the appropriate values String encoding = BbServiceManager.getConfigurationService().getBbProperty( “bbconfig.webserver.charset” ); response.setContentType( “text/html;charset=” + encoding );

I18N API LocaleManager –Fail-safe service (no service exceptions; falls back to en_US locale) –Hides locale negotiation –AP2 is per-VI; ML feature set has per course, or per user. LocaleManager localeManager = BbServiceManager.getLocaleManager();

I18N API BbLocale –Wraps JDK locale object –Auto-negotiated for current context Important for dynamic, multi-locale capabilities –Wraps utility functions BbLocale locale = localeManager.getLocale(); locale.getLocale();

Application <% Locale locale = BbServiceManager.getLocaleManager().getLocale().getLocaleObject(); ResourceBundle bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle( "resources", locale ); String pageTitle = bundle.getString( "index.page.title" ); String formatDemoTitle = bundle.getString( "format.demo.title" ); String formatDemoDesc = bundle.getString( "format.demo.desc" ); String inputDemoTitle = bundle.getString( "input.demo.title" ); String inputDemoDesc = bundle.getString( "input.demo.desc" ); %> "> " href=" "> " href=" ">

Application

What’s Wrong Here? String dateString = dateValue.toString(); out.println( dateString ); Date.toString() does output a locale-appropriate string, or give any options for formatting. toString(): Mon Jul 19 21:02:13 GMT-05: In French: 19 juil h 02 GMT-05:00 In English: Jul 19, :02:13 PM GMT-05:00

Displaying Data value = locale.formatDate( dateValue, BbLocale.Name.SHORT ); value = locale.formatNumber( floatValue ); value = locale.formatName( user, BbLocale.Name.SHORT );

Displaying Data Corresponds to Java libraries (see java.text.*), but with formats predefined to Blackboard UI conventions. –DateFormat.format() –DecimalFormat.format() –PercentageFormat.format()

Format Enumerations BbLocale.Name –LONG, MEDIUM, SHORT, GREETING BbLocale.Date –LONG, MEDIUM, SHORT BbLocale.Time –LONG, MEDIUM, SHORT

What’s Wrong Here? String numberString = “100,000.00”; float floatVal = Float.parseFloat( numberString ); Number.parseType() methods do not perform locale- sensitive transformations. European locales, for example, use comma separators, instead of decimal separators. E.g., ,00

Reading Data BbLocale locale = BbServiceManager.getLocaleManager().getLocale(); float floatValue = locale.parseNumberAsFloat( input ); double doubleValue = locale.parseNumber( input );

Limitations Pre-R7, B2 Manifest is single locale –Block installs as en_US, and always displays as en_US –E.g., if Locale is es_ES, links are not rendered properly Pre-R7, Multi-byte locales not supported –Incompatible, single-byte locales not verified (e.g., ISO will not co-exist with ISO )

Looking Ahead – Blackboard Academic Suite™ Release 7 Complete internationalization –Additional extraction and localization –Platform changes to support additional, non-Latin languages Multi-byte I/O support –Database (NVARCHAR, etc.) –UTF-8/16 encoding browser to application, application to database UCS-2 on Windows

Looking Ahead – Blackboard Academic Suite ™ Release 7 Blackboard Building Blocks Resource Bundles –Register bundles to display appropriate end-user text Multiple Locales in Blackboard Building Blocks –Installation, default, and fall-back rules

Thank You!