International Programming for Microsoft Windows (Dv-Mps Programming)

A guide to using Microsoft Visual C++ to write Unicode-enabled source code explains how to adapt Windows-based applications for different languages and cultures.

In today's wired world, software must work for a global audience. International Programming for Microsoft Windows compiles hard-to-find information on internationalizing software using C, C++, and Windows 2000. If you're a developer or manager planning international software development, this book can show you how to take your software to new markets successfully.

International Programming excels in two ways. First, it delivers a fine historical tour of the world's character sets (used to represent character data) from old mainframe standards (like IBM's EBCDIC) to ASCII, ANSI, and the current Unicode standard. Like many other aspects of computing, international support only gets better with time. Second, the book addresses built-in support for Standard C, and then moves on to the improved internationalization available in Standard C++ (with support for locales and facets).

The heart of this book is its extensive material on the international features and Unicode available in Windows 2000, which comes with support for dozens of languages. (This text shows how Windows supports both non-Unicode and Unicode character sets with two sets of APIs for all text functions.) The book highlights features in Windows 2000 that facilitate a truly global perspective. A standout here is the custom locale-browser used to view international Registry information. Several programming strategies are also outlined to make sure code can be adapted to local conditions easily--because you'll never know where today's markets can take you. Internationalization is an idea whose time has certainly arrived, and this title shows how to start writing code that's ready for more than one language. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Internationalizaton basics
• Locale-dependent software
• Strategies for adaptation to foreign markets
• Text output in non-English languages
• History of character sets (EBCDIC, ASCII, ISO code pages, ANSI, and Unicode)
• Support for locales in Standard C
• Locales and facets in C++
• Unicode support in Windows NT and2000
• Locale identifiers
• The locale database and the Windows Registry
• Date, time, number, and currency formats
• Sample code for a custom locale browser
• Multilingual input and output APIs
• Guidelines for internationalization (with COM, Web, and speech recognition)
• General programming guidelines for internationalization