Adding Language Support to Mac OS X
John H. Jenkins, Senior Software Engineer, Apple Computer, Inc., USA
Intended Audience: Software Engineer, Font Designers, Managers, Marketers
Session Level: Beginner
Mac OS X comes localized into 16 different languages, any of which may be selected by users. In addition, users can create and view content in many more languages by using the included fonts and keyboard layouts.
Languages supported include those using Roman, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Indic, Armenian, Canadian Syllabics, and Cherokee scripts.
Mac OS X allows customers to augment this set themselves, by adding fonts, keyboard layouts, and (via the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository, or CLDR) locale data.
Attendees will learn everything they need to know to add support for new languages to Mac OS X. We will cover how Mac OS X works with fonts, and how you can use the available tools to add extra features to a font. We will also show how to construct a new keyboard layout and add it to Mac OS X. Finally, we will discuss how Mac OS X uses ICU and CLDR, and how you can participate in the CLDR process to add support for new locales.