Re: Language support in Solaris

I also would like to point out that in general sense, the term
internationalization means the corresponding product is ready to be
localized to any langauges/cultures/codesets. With that definition,
Solaris has been fully internationalized since Solaris 2.1 (back in
1993) through a single binary.

On top of the internationalized base Solaris, locales and language supports
can be added on-the-fly afterward the system installation without even need to
halt or bring down to single user mode and this has been available since
the Solaris 2.1.

Even though they are all the same single binary product plus a set of
dynamically loaded localization components per each language version of
Solaris, we only had multiple products such as European Solaris 2.1,
Simplified Chinese Solaris 2.1, Japanese Solaris 2.1 and so on up to
Solaris 7 simply because there were license issues on each
geo-specific resources such as Japanese fonts, Asian input method systems
and such that came from 3rd party vendors and we didn't want to
make, for instance, European customers pay Asian fonts and input method
systems license frees.

However, those issues have been resolved finally around a couple of years
ago and so starting from Solaris 8, we've been shipping basically
a single product since then.

With regards,

Ienup


] Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 10:28:22 -0700
] From: "A. Vine" <andrea.vine@sun.com>
] Subject: Re: Language support in Solaris
] To: souravm <souravm@infy.com>
] Cc: "W3intl (E-mail)" <www-international@w3.org>
] MIME-version: 1.0
] Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
] X-Accept-Language: fr,en,de,it,ja,ru
]
] Sourav,
]
] You make some very important points.  Let me explain a few things.
]
] Saying something is "internationalised" isn't very descriptive.  There 
are all
] sorts of ways and points of support in internationalization, and no 
product in
] the world does them all.  So, this may give you an understanding of the
] following explanation.
]
] Yes, Solaris 2.6 has a trememndous amount of internationalization.  Solaris 7
] has more, Solaris 8 has even more, and Solaris 9 still more.  We are always
] adding support for more languages, scripts, locales, and standards, as 
well as
] improving integration and performance.
]
] The reason for the Simplified Chinese Solaris 7 Operating Environment,
Japanese
] Solaris 7 Operating Environment, etc., is that those releases contain a
] localized user interface.  The OS itself is no different, but now the 
user has
a
] translated interface.  Also, in Solaris 2.6 and 7, some of the
language-specific
] processing files are not included in the base product.  For example, if you
have
] English Solaris 2.6 loaded, there are neither fonts nor input methods nor
] locales for Simplified Chinese.  But these can simply be added to the English
] installation using the Global Application Developer Kit; reinstallation 
of the
] operating system is _not_ necessary.  So the OS can handle the data once you
] provide a few extra files specific to that data.
]
] Note that in Solaris 8 and subsequent releases, support for the world's major
] charsets, scripts, and languages is available on the same CD as the base 
OS.
] You may choose to install whichever languages/locales you want to include
using
] the installer, and can add support later as you need it.  So you don't 
need to
] order a second CD (or download separate files) to get language support.  The
] only files which are on a separate CD are the translations of the user
] interface.   Here on my desk, I have Solaris 8 with all the languages and
] locales installed, and I can type Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional
] Chinese, Korean, Russian, etc. even though I have only installed from the 
base
] product.
]
] I realize this isn't directly related to the WWW, but if you're 
supporting Web
] applications from Solaris, this is important to know.
]
] I hope this answers your questions.  If you have more, please feel free to
email
] me directly.
]
] Regards,
] Andrea
]
] souravm wrote:
] >
] > Hi All,
] >
] > I have a doubt regarding the language support in Solaris OS. According 
to my
understanding from 2.6 onwards Solaris OS is internationalised. If a 
Solaris OS
has a support for locale(s) specific for a language it can be used for that
language. Hence there is no need to have a language specific OS. To be 
precise,
if I have a Solaris OS which can presently support English only, I can make it
to support Japanese language once I install the proper option pack for the
corresponding locale (related to Japanese language).
] >
] > Now the doubt is if this is the case then why there are versions of 
Solaris
like - Simplified Chinese Solaris 7 Operating Environment, Japanese Solaris 7
Operating Environment, etc. ?
] >
] > Regards,
] > Sourav

Received on Sunday, 14 April 2002 23:40:25 UTC