Other languages - NLS/localization

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   Can anyone share about their experience with Accuterm and localization or globalization (some call it different things).  We need to display our screens in different languages - say Chinese for our call center in Singapore.

a) Will the expanded character set displaying in the 'green screen' character cell cause issues with Accuterm?

b) Will the expanded character set cause issues if passed to any of the Accuterm subroutines which present the windows listbox or msgbox?

c) Any general experiences with UniVerse NLS and Accuterm? e.g. implementation issues or show stoppers, ease of implementation

d) I'm newbie to Accuterm, are there features that specifically facilitate or lend themselves to localization/globalization/NLS projects?

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rbaker_hughes Members Profile Find Members Posts Newbie Joined: October 06 2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 13	Post Options Post Reply Quote rbaker_hughes Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Other languages - NLS/localization Posted: October 06 2006 at 5:02am
	Can anyone share about their experience with Accuterm and localization or globalization (some call it different things). We need to display our screens in different languages - say Chinese for our call center in Singapore. a) Will the expanded character set displaying in the 'green screen' character cell cause issues with Accuterm? b) Will the expanded character set cause issues if passed to any of the Accuterm subroutines which present the windows listbox or msgbox? c) Any general experiences with UniVerse NLS and Accuterm? e.g. implementation issues or show stoppers, ease of implementation d) I'm newbie to Accuterm, are there features that specifically facilitate or lend themselves to localization/globalization/NLS projects?
	Baker

PSchellenbach Members Profile Find Members Posts Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150	Post Options Post Reply Quote PSchellenbach Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: October 09 2006 at 4:53am
	Hi Baker - AccuTerm is becoming more international-friendly, but is still lacking some importatant capabilities, which we hope to add in future releases. First, AccuTerm works with 8-bit characters and is not Unicode or UTF-8 aware at this time. It also does not work with DBCS like Chinese, at least on the green screen. Beginning with release 5.3a, it will work with SBCS other than Western European. AccuTerm GUI is more flexible in this capacity. Although it does not support Unicode or UTF-8 at present, it will work with DBCS such as Chinese. There is a setting "host uses Windows character set" which disables translation of character codes, so they pass unchanged from the host program to the GUI engine. I have no experience sending DBCS strings to the MsgBox, ListBox, etc subroutines. I do not believe there will be a problem but it would need to be tested on a system running DBCS such as Chinese. Its been a long time since I worked with Universe NLS, but if I remember correctly, Universe uses Unicode internally and you can supply various translation tables for translating to DBCS. I imagine IBM supply some pre-built tables for common DBCS code pages. When using AccuTerm GUI, all outgoing data is encoded by one subroutine, and a complementary subroutine decodes all data received from the GUI. These routines may need to be tweaked to handle DBCS, especially identifying system delimiter (AM, VM, SVM) characters. This should not be a difficult task. Thanks, Pete

rbaker_hughes Members Profile Find Members Posts Newbie Joined: October 06 2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 13	Post Options Post Reply Quote rbaker_hughes Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: October 09 2006 at 5:23am
	Thank you Pete for your response. The green screen character cell is still our primary user interface. A GUI project is expected but not imminent. We thought we might introduce the listbox or msgbox in phase 1 of our globalization project, however, we cannot do that without the ability to display Chinese - in both the green screen and windows boxes. Do you have a projected delivery date for a Chinese friendly Atwin version? TIA -Baker
	Baker

PSchellenbach Members Profile Find Members Posts Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150	Post Options Post Reply Quote PSchellenbach Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: October 09 2006 at 6:51am
	Hi Baker - We are actually in the process of rewriting AccuTerm from scratch and full Unicode support is planned. But we are a long ways from predicting when the new version will be available - hopefully in the next 6 - 12 months. Thanks, Pete

brucej Members Profile Find Members Posts Newbie Joined: May 08 2006 Status: Offline Points: 4	Post Options Post Reply Quote brucej Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: September 08 2008 at 9:04am
	Just wondering if there is any update on the status of the Unicode support?

PSchellenbach Members Profile Find Members Posts Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150	Post Options Post Reply Quote PSchellenbach Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: September 09 2008 at 3:05am
	Hi Bruce - No firm status yet, but hope to have Unicode in the next version, maybe before end of year, if all goes smoothly. Thanks, Pete