Developing WorldReady Applications for Windows 2000XP

1
Developing World-Ready Applications for Windows
2000/XP
Houman Pournasseh Lead Program Manager Russ
Rolfe Program Manager Windows Division
2
Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

3
Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

4
Definitions

• World-Ready Properly globalized and
  localizable.
• Globalization The process of designing and
  implementing source code so that it can
  accommodate any local market (locale) or
  script.
• Localizability Designing software code and
  resources such that resources can be localized
  for any local market (locale) without changing
  the source code.
• Localization The process of adapting a product
  (including both text and non-text elements) to
  meet the language, cultural, and political
  expectations and/or requirements of a specific
  local market (locale).

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Users and Locales
To define formatting for date, time,users set
the user locale
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Windows XP International Enhancements

• Nine (9) new locales added to previous list of
  126.
• Punjabi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, Kyrgyz,
  Mongolian (Cyrillic), Galician, Divehi, Syriac
• Over 10 new languages and scripts,
• More robust font display for East Asian
  languages.
• Improved Regional Settings options.
• Largely improved MUI support
• New location (GEO)

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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Why invest in World Ready products?

• Get into international market (World Wide Web
  era)
• Create a single functionality binary to
• Reduce development effort and cost
• Ease support and maintenance pain

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Why invest in World Ready products?

• Sim-Ship all language versions at once saves lost
  revenue.

Release Eng Ver 1.0
Release Eng Ver 1.1
Release Ger Ver 1.0
Release Ger Ver 1.1
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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Windows 2000/XP Unicode Single Binary

• Built in support for hundreds of languages
• Any (well behaved) language Win32 application can
  run on any language version of Windows 2000/XP
• Native Unicode support for new scripts
• Surrogate support

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Unicode Encoding

• Non-Unicode applications behavior depends on
  users settings and makes data exchange between
  OS language versions impossible.

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Legacy systems support

• Few exceptions for not Fully Unicode apps
• App has to run on Win9x and NT
• Existing Internet protocols and standards require
  special encoding
• Supporting apps that need to run on Win9x
• Create two separate binaries one ANSI one
  Unicode
• Register as ANSI and internally convert to/from
  Unicode as needed
• Use MSLU!

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Data types

• For 8 bit and double-byte characters
• typedef char CHAR // 8 bit character
• typedef char LPSTR // pointer to 8 bit string
• For Unicode (Wide) characters
• typedef unsigned short WCHAR // 16 bit character
• typedef WCHAR LPWSTR //pointer to 16 bit string
  

TCHAR
LPTSTR
wchar_t
char
wchar_t
char
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Win32 API prototypes

• Generic function prototypes// winuser.hifdef
  UNICODEdefine SetWindowText
  SetWindowTextWelsedefine SetWindowText
  SetWindowTextAendif // UNICODE
• A routines behavior under Windows 2000/XP
• W routines behavior under Win9x

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C run time extensions
Compile with D_UNICODE to get Unicode version
Compile with DUNICODE to get Unicode version
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Unicode ? ANSI

• Converting between ANSI and Unicode
• MultiByteToWideChar for codepage ? Unicode
• WideCharToMultiByte for Unicode ? codepage
• CP can be any legal codepage number or a
  predefined such as CP_ACP, CP_SYMBOL, CP_UTF8,
  etc.
• Tips for writing Unicode
• Use generic data types and function prototypes
• Replace p/p-- with CharNext/CharPrev
• Compute buffer sizes in TCHAR

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Quiz

• What is the size (in bytes) of a text file saved
  as Unicode in Notepad which contains hello
• 5
• 12
• 10
• 20

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Quiz

• What is the size (in bytes) of a text file saved
  as Unicode in Notepad which contains hello
• 5
• 12
• 10
• 20

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Quiz

• Which one of the following APIs is not defined in
  Windows 2000 / Windows XP?
• SetWindowTextW
• SetWindowTextA
• SetWindowPosW
• SetWindowPos

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Quiz

• Which one of the following APIs is not defined in
  Windows 2000 / Windows XP?
• SetWindowTextW
• SetWindowTextA
• SetWindowPosW
• SetWindowPos

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Demo!
Porting an ANSI application to Unicode
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Encodings in Web pages

• ANSI codepages or ISO character encodings
• Mono-lingual or restricted to one script
• Raw Unicode UTF-16
• OK for Windows NT networks
• Number entities 2325
• OK for occasional use
• UTF-8 Recommended encoding
• Supported by IE 4.0 and Netscape 4.0

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Setting web encoding

• HTML/DHTML
• Tag in the head of the document
• ltMETA HTTP-EQUIV"Content-Type"
  CONTENT"text/html charsetltvaluegt"gt
• XML
• lt?xml version1.0 encodingltvaluegt?gt
• ASP
• Specify charset using ASP directives
• Per session
• ltSession.CodePageltcharsetgtgt
• Per page
• lt_at_CODEPAGEltcharsetgtgt

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Setting encodings for .NET

• Class System.Text
• Distinction between File, Request, and Response
  encodings
• in code
• Response.ContentEncodingltvaluegt
• in page directive
• lt_at_Page ResponseEncodingltvaluegtgt
• in configuration file
• ltglobalization
• requestEncodingltvaluegt
• responseEncodingltvaluegt
• fileEncodingltvaluegt /gt

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Universally encoded page
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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Quiz

• In Gregorian calendar, what date is represented
  by 07/04/01?
• July 4, 2001
• April 7, 2001
• April 1st, 2001
• Depends on where I am!

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Quiz

• In Gregorian calendar, what date is represented
  by 07/04/01?
• July 4, 2001
• April 7, 2001
• April 1st, 2001
• Depends on where I am!

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Windows 2000/XP National Language Settings

• NLS APIs allow you to automatically adjust to
  users formatting preferences
• Date 07/04/01 is ?? 13?7?4? in Japan
• Time 900PM is 2100 in the France
• Currency 1,000.00 is 1.000,00 in Germany
• Large Numbers 123,456,789.00 is
  12,34,56,789.00 in Hindi
• Sort Order German ä comes after a
  Swedish ä comes after z

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Locale awareness

• Eliminate implicit locale assumptions from code
• define ToUpper(ch) \
• ((ch)lt'Z' ? (ch) (ch)'A' - 'a')
• Query system to format locale-dependent data
  using NLS APIs and LCIDs.

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NLS APIs Getting and setting locales

• Querying locales
• LCID GetSystemDefaultLCID
• EnumSystemLocales
• LCID GetUserDefaultLCID()
• LCID GetThreadLocale()
• Setting locales
• BOOL SetThreadLocale(LCID dwNewLocale)
• BOOL SetLocaleInfo(LCID,)// Works for standard
  locales only!
• No APIs to set System locale, User locale, and UI
  language

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NLS APIs Querying locale information

• To retrieve information specific to a given
  locale GetLocaleInfo
• Gives information for any valid locale (takes an
  LCID).
• LCTYPE input tells type of info to retrieve for a
  given locale (e.g. currency symbol, name of
  months).
• Returns info in string buffer (LPTSTR).
• To retrieve information specific to a location
  GetGeoInfo
• Gives information for any valid location (takes
  an LCID).
• SYSGEOTYPE input tells type of info to retrieve
  for a given location(e.g. LCID, Time zones).

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NLS APIs Formatting data

• To enumerate formats
• EnumCalendarInfo(Ex)
• EnumDateFormats
• EnumTimeFormats
• To format data directly
• GetCurrencyFormat
• GetDateFormat
• GetTimeFormat

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Demo!
A locale aware application
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Locale awareness in web pages

• To retrieve user locale
• A server variable
• Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE")
• A property of the navigator object
• navigator.UserLanguage
• To set a locale
• In DHTML
• SetLocale("de")
• DateData FormatDateTime(now(), vbShortDate)
• In ASP
• lt Session.LCID 1041 gt
• lt Response.Write( FormatDateTime(dtNow) ) gt

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Locale awareness in .NET

• Class System.Globalization
• Referenced as CultureInfo set of preferences
  based on language and culture.
• Pattern xx-XX, such as fr-CA, de-AT (RFC-1766)
• Setting the CultureInfo
• Implicit Picked up from User Locale
• Explicit
• In code Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture
  new CultureInfo (de-DE)
• In page directive lt_at_Page Cultureltvaluegtgt
• In config ltglobalization cultureltvaluegt /gt

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Demo!
Locale aware web site
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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

40
Handling Input methods

• Easiest Using edit controls (recommended)
• Responding directly to user input
• Input locales (language input method) HKL
• GetKeyboardLayout
• ActivateKeyboardLayout
• LoadKeyboardLayout
• Windows messages
• WM_INPUTLANGCHANGEREQUEST
• WM_INPUTLANGCHANGE
• WM_IME. (for IME support only)
• WM_CHAR and WM_IME_CHAR

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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Windows 2000/XP Complex Scripts

• Complex Scripts have one or more of the following
  attributes
• Bi-directional (BiDi) reordering (Arabic, Hebrew)
• Contextual shaping (Arabic, Indic family)
• Display of combining characters (Arabic, Thai,
  Indic)
• Specialized word-breaking (Thai)
• Avoid illegal character combinations (Thai,
  Indic)
• Text Justification (Arabic)

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Complex Scripts BiDi reordering
Back
44
Complex Scripts Contextual Shaping
Back
45
Complex Scripts Combining Characters
Back
46
Complex Scripts Justification
Back
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Uniscribe

• Clients Windows 2000/XP, Trident, Microsoft
  Office 2000/XP
• A collection of exported APIs (high and low
  level)
• Hides implementation details
• A shaping engine per language

Application
LPK.DLL
USERGDI
USP
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Options to display text

• Plain text in application
• Standard edit control or
• Win32 API (ExtTextOut / DrawText).
• Simple formatted text
• In Win32 apps, use Richedit control.
• For Web pages, use Document Object Model (DHTML).
• Advanced formatting
• Use Uniscribe (see SDK and MSJ article).

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Special considerations

• When dealing with BiDi, set RTL reading order and
  alignment
• SetTextAlign / GetTextAlign with TA_RIGHT
• ExtTextOut with ETO_RTLREADING
• DrawText with DT_RTLREADING
• To measure line lengths
• Do not sum cached character widths
• Do use a GetTextExtent function or Uniscribe
• When displaying typed text
• Do not output characters one at a time!
• Do save text in a buffer and display the whole
  string with Uniscribe or Win32 API

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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Windows 2000/XP Font support

• Introduction of OpenType fonts
• Extended TTF with glyphs for PE, ME, Thai, Greek,
  Turkish, Cyrillic
• Font fallback mechanism for CS and Eastern Asian
  scripts used by Uniscribe
• Font linking mechanism used by GDI

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Font independency Win32 programming

• Not to do
• Hard code font face names
• Assume a given font is installed
• Assume selected font supports the desired script
• To do
• Use MS Shell Dlg face name in Dialog resources
• EnumFontFamiliesEx or ChooseFont to select fonts

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Font independency In Web pages

• Avoid placing text formatting values into in-line
  style.
• ltspan style "font-size 10pt font-family
  Arial"gt Hello lt/spangt
• Declare text style in CSS files
• ltstylegt
• .myStyle font-size 10pt font-family
  Arial
• lt/stylegt
• ltspan class myStylegt Hello lt/spangt
• Use WEFT to embed fonts to your web pages (IE
  only)
• http//www.microsoft.com/typography/web/default.ht
  m

54
Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Windows 2000/XP Multilanguage UI

• Multilanguage version of Windows 2000/XP allows
  you to
• Switch the language of UI without rebooting
• Set the language of UI per user
• Add/Remove language modules
• Offer your own solution for a multilingual UI

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Multilingual UI Applications Possible options

• One localized .exe per target language

• One multilingual language resource DLL

• One resource DLL per target language

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Satellite DLL

• Initialize to current UI language.
• Windows 2000/XP GetUserDefaultUILanguage()
• Down-level platforms See Writing Multilingual
  User Interface Applications on Globaldev.
• Allow user to select UI language.
• Use naming convention, for example
  resltLANGIDgt.dll
• Find all resource DLLs using FindFirstFile and
  FindNextFile
• Use LoadLibrary(Ex) to load DLL file

58
Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

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Windows 2000/XP Mirroring technology
To create an automatic right-to-left layout of
the user interface for localized versions of
bidirectional languages (Arabic and Hebrew).
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Coordinate transformation

• Origin (0,0) in upper RIGHT corner of window
• X scale factor -1
• X values increase from right to left

Origin
Origin
Increasing x
Increasing x
0
1
0
1
Default (LTR) window
Mirrored (RTL) window
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Controlling the mirroring style

• Per Process
• GetProcessDefaultLayout
• SetProcessDefaultLayout (LAYOUT_RTL)
• Per window
• CreateWindowEx (WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL
  WS_EX_NOINHERITLAYOUT )
• SetWindowLong
• Per DC
• GetLayout / SetLayout
• LAYOUT_BITMAPORIENTATIONPRESERVED

62
Controlling the mirroring style

• Dialog Resources
• Set WS_EX_LAYOUTRTL in dialog template
• Message boxes
• Use MB_RTLLAYOUT option
• BitBlt/StretchBlt
• Use NOMIRRORBITMAP flag

63
Mirroring common issues

• Mirrored bitmap!

Off screen bitblt
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BiDi mirroring in web pages

• In a web context, mirroring and RTL reading order
  go hand-in-hand
• Using DIR attribute would
• Set the right alignment of the text
• Set the right_to_left reading order of the text
• Mirror the page context
• Leave the orientation of stationary elements
• To set DIR attribute
• Html lthtml dirRTLgt
• At an element level ltspan dir RTLgt
• DHTML object document.Dir "RTL

65
Tips for BiDi web pages

• Directional images
• ltIMG stylefilterflipH SRCarrow.jpg gt
• Avoid explicit alignments
• Obsolete usage of alignleft in tables and
  cells
• Avoid absolute positioning of elements
• Remember tables get mirrored automatically, use
  them for robust reversibility!

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Demo!
Mirrored DHTML
67
Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

68
Localizability

• Localization of software Adapting user interface
  elements to a specific language
• Should require no engineering changes!
• Changes to code are part of localizability
  process
• Source code changes, due to localization, are
  bugs in the core code!

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Challenges

• Developers are focused on their primary language
• Coding tricks to save work (saves a few )
• Hardcoded strings
• Creating text strings from phrases by
  concatenation
• Creates dialog boxes using overlapped controls
• The tricks cost lots of because
• Bugs difficult to detect before localization is
  done
• Code change required to address the issue

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Unbreakable rules (1/3)

• Remove all localizable resources from source
  code, place in standard resource file
• Do not place non-localizable strings in resource
  file

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Unbreakable rules (2/3)

• Avoid composite strings that are built at
  runtime
• Wrong way
• var t1_text "Not enough memory to"
• t2_text "the file"
• v1_text "open"
• v2_text "copy"
• v3_text "save"
• ...
• text t1_text" "v2_text" "t2_text"
  "filename"."
• Right way
• var t1_text "Not enough memory to open the file
  s1."
• var t2_text "Not enough memory to copy the file
  s1."
• var t3_text "Not enough memory to save the file
  s1."
• Use FormatMessage for multiple variable sentences
• Thus "Not enough memory to s1 the file s2."
• Becomes Liian vähän muistia tiedoston 2 1.

72
Unbreakable rules (3/3)

• Do not reuse string resources
• If the same string resource is to be used in more
  than one place, create one instance of the
  resource per use
• Use the same resource identifiers throughout the
  life of a product

73
Text Expansion

• Allow for text expansion

• Rule of thumb
• lt 10 300
• gt 10 30

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Text Expansion (web pages)

• Design so Entire Dialog Consists of Tables
• ltbodygtlt!-- Use one main table --gtlttable
  width100gtlt can contain other tables
  gtlt/tablegt
• lt/bodygt
• Avoid Fixed Width Items
• Each Control Should be in a Separate Cell
• Allow Text Wrapping - do not use nowrap
• Separate Check Boxes and Radio Buttons from Labels

75
Text Expansion HTML Dialogs
76
Mirroring HTML Dialogs
77
Localizability

• Pseudo-Localization is a good way to test
  Localizability

78
Agenda

• Definitions
• Why invest in World-Ready products?
• Globalization step-by-step
• Universal encoding - Unicode
• Locale aware
• Handle different input methods
• Complex script aware
• Font independency
• Multi-lingual UI aware
• Mirroring aware
• Localizability
• Conclusion References

79
Final Conclusions

• Benefits of investing in development of
  World-Ready applications are real
• Windows 2000/XP eases the pain and sets the
  standard
• The biggest task in implementing World-Ready
  applications is setting the designers and
  engineers mind-set to think GLOBAL

80
Resources

• MSDN for latest documentation about new APIs
• Developing International Software for Windows 95
  and Windows NT
• Windows 2000/XP Globalization http//www.microso
  ft.com/globaldev
• World-Ready Guide
• You are not World-Ready If
• E-Mail aliases drintl_at_microsoft.com gdhelp_at_micr
  osoft.com

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Questions?