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Version 1.3 of the Java 2 Software Development Kit, due in early 2000, again extends the international reach of the Java 2 platform. This talk will focus on two areas: support for Arabic and Hebrew and the input method engine service provider interface (SPI).
To support Arabic and Hebrew, a previous release introduced bidirectional text handling in some text components of the Swing user interface toolkit as well as the notion of user interface component orientation. Version 1.3 extends bidirectional text handling to all Swing text components, and implements component orientation for most Swing user interface components, thus making it easy to create products serving Arabic and Hebrew markets.
The input method engine SPI allows developers to create input methods that can be installed into any Java runtime system. It provides standard interfaces that input methods have to implement, as well as call-back interfaces that allow them to request information from the client text component and services from the runtime system. Input methods can be multilingual and support any language(s). An input method will be shown that can generate text in up to four languages in a single operation.
Norbert Lindenberg is an internationalization engineer in Sun Microsystems' Java Software group. Before joining Sun, he worked on a variety of internationalization projects at General Magic and Apple Computer. He holds an M.S. degree in Computer Science from University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
Yasuo Kida and Peter Edberg will describe and demonstrate some of the features of Unicode and multilingual support in Mac OS 9.0:
Yasuo Kida is the manager of Engineering Tokyo in Apple's Mac OS international software group responsible for CJK technologies. His group's recent work includes the Kotoeri input method, language engine APIs, Japanese tokenization based on morphological analysis, and fonts. He also participated in the design of the Java input method framework for the Java 2 platform.
Peter Edberg has worked in Apple's Mac OS international software group for 11 years, at sites in Cupertino, France, China, and Oregon. Recent areas of focus include text encoding conversion, Unicode text utilities, and Unicode input. Before Apple, he worked on Japanese handwriting input for 6 years, preceded by a couple of years in SRI International's bioinformation systems group.
Until recently, the content of the Internet was English only. But this situation is rapidly changing. Today more than 50% of Internet users are located outside the US. According to IDC, that number is expected to approach 70% by year 2003.
In response to these changes, companies are seriously revisiting their e-business strategies. No longer is it sufficient to publish their web content in English only. Companies that take this US-centric stance risk losing their market share to upstart companies that offer the same products or services in other languages.
This session explores the way companies are responding to these challenges, exploring the challenges of web site globalization and the impact of the Internet on the globalization process.
Howard Schwartz is VP of Marketing at Uniscape.com, the first E-Services Translation Portal on the Internet and recently winner of Internet World Best of Show. Mr. Schwartz is a marketing strategist who has helped numerous software companies develop their communications strategies, brand identity, market positioning, business models and marketing plans. He has taught at Stanford and Indiana Universities, and holds a Ph.D. from Brown University and a B.A. from Duke University.
Unicode 3.0 is the major new version of the Unicode Standard. It adds over 10,000 new characters, with enhanced character data for implementations and a reorganized text for better reference. It is also the reference version for Unicode normalization, which will be in widespread use in such standards as XML and EcmaScript. The Unicode Character Database 3.0.0, with new characters and character properties, is available now, and the book will follow in the first quarter of 2000.
This talk discusses the contents of Unicode 3.0 and how implementers can start working with it.
Dr. Mark Davis is the lead architect at IBM's Center for Java Technology, Silicon Valley. He co-founded the Unicode effort, is the president of the Unicode Consortium, and is a principal co-author of the Unicode Standard. Dr. Davis is also co-author of KanjiTalk and what became WorldScript, and architected the bulk of the Java JDK1.1 internationalization support.
More information about Unicode 3.0 is available at the the Unicode web site. An open source enablement library for Unicode is available from IBM.
David Baskerville, Senior Product Manager at Adobe Systems Inc., will discuss and demonstrate Acrobat 4.0, the newest version of Adobe's application for creating and using Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
Acrobat 4.0 further extends PDF's international reach with support for Chinese, Korean, and Middle Eastern text. We will discuss support for double-byte CJK font embedding in a PDF document, CID font technology, and universal viewing and printing of CJK text as implemented in Acrobat 4.0.
More information is available at www.adobe.com/acrobat.
Speech recognition as a way of inputting text has gained substantial popularity in the market place. There are several companies that are making software of this kind, such as IBM ViaVoice, L & H and Dragon. However, compared with pictographic languages, inputting by keyboard is relatively easier for alphabetic languages, such as English. In other words, speech recognition as a means of inputting probably has profound impact in the market where pictographic languages are dominant, such as in China.
Using IBM's Chinese ViaVoice 4.2 as the testing software, this event will allow the audience to determine by themselves whether the Chinese speech recognition software meets users' expectation.
Celine Ho is the product manager of Alestron, Inc. Prior to her employment with Alestron, Inc., she worked as product manager with Xi'an Johnson Pharmaceutical, a division of Johnson and Johnson. Alestron, Inc. is a major distributor of Asian language software. The company distributes RichWin Chinese supporting system, Mandarin and Cantonese voice inputting systems, hand writing systems, Chinese OCR, Motorola WisdomPen and IBM ViaVoice. Alestron, Inc. is also an expert in China business with business intelligence, business news, translation and localization services.
Management and Culture
What unexpected challenges do Americans face when assigned to manage a high-technology business in China or when they need to get something done by a Chinese OEM? What problems do they have in common with the Chinese owner of a high-tech business in, say, Fremont? Can intercultural miscommunication actually affect the management of engineering teams? And how can business negotiations have anything to do with history and politics? This is business!!!
There are ways of looking at cultural differences that will help you get your job done better and without conflict. With the right preparation, the reactions of people from other cultures will make much more sense, and you will all get better results.
Techology and Culture
Technology can help with business communications. Computers are powerful enough to really make a difference, if people expect the right things from them. With the right technology, communications do not need to be a barrier to business.
Through examples, anecdotes, and an interesting bit of theory or two, the speakers will attempt to show how they stumbled through more than one amusing situation on the way to understanding themselves, other cultures, and the power of people and technology to bridge barriers between nations.
About the Speakers
Joe Katz is director of business development for PocketScience, Inc. He has headed a joint venture company in China for Apple Computer, provided international business consulting to American firms on behalf of the U.S. government in Silicon Valley and China, and introduced Chinese software and publications to Americans as general manager of Pacific Rim Connections, Inc. and as a marketing manager with China Books & Periodicals, Inc. He holds an MBA in Global Business and a BA in Asian Studies.
James T. Caldwell founded Pacific Rim Connections, Inc. in 1986 to harness the power of technology to multilingual and intercultural communications. He was previously Assistant Director for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. Dr. Caldwell helped set up the Hong Kong and Beijing offices of International Geosystems, Ltd., a Canadian company, to market "TianMa," the Chinese-English word processor for DOS. At Clarke Consulting Group, Redwood Shores, CA, he trained engineers and managers at Dupont, Motorola, Raychem, and others on techniques of intercultural communications and their bottom-line consequences. He holds a Ph.D. in International Politics and Comparative Organizational Behavior.
With the growing importance of e-commerce and e-business, companies that never previously thought about localization are facing the question of how to roll out and update web sites in many different languages. For these companies, time to market and quality are the overriding concerns, with cost containment an important yet secondary factor. This talk discusses new technologies and services that are addressing the challenges of multilingual web sites. Focus is placed on new technologies that automate the workflow, networking of translators, and scalable translation memory. A demo of Uniscape's translation memory solution will be part of the talk.
Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) is a relatively new API set that was initially introduced in the MacOS version 8.5. ATSUI is a style based rich-text API that has nearly all of the features of QuickDraw GX typography, with the addition of being based on the Unicode standard. Unlike GX though, ATSUI is built into the MacOS and works closely with QuickDraw Text and the QuickDraw graphics model. ATSUI provides the functionality to application developers to quickly include advanced features within their applications such as full Unicode bidirectional text functionality, font fallbacks, memory usage callbacks, AAT (Apple Advanced Typography - formerly known as GX tables) font table access and usage, advanced layout and style controls, full hit-testing and cursor movement routines among many other useful features.
Daniel Fenwick has been a senior engineer at Apple for the last three years and is directly responsible for ATSUI and Apple's advanced text layout technology. Previous to working for Apple, Daniel worked as a consultant on Windows and Macintosh projects and co-founded Signature Software, Inc., creating customized contextual handwriting fonts.
Considering the pictographic nature of Chinese written language and the learning curve for acquiring the skills for computer inputting, keyboard-based input methods are problematic. Therefore the emergence of handwriting as an input method seems to make more sense for the Chinese language than for any alphabetic language.
Several Chinese handwriting recognition systems are available in the market now, including Motorola WisdomPen, PenPower, GoGo Pen and others. This session will use Motorola Lexicus' technology, WisdomPen, to illustrate how pen-based input for the Chinese language is achieved. The future of pen-based input system will also be discussed in comparison with key-board based and voice input methods that have emerged recently.
Michael Zhao, Ph.D., is President of Alestron, Inc., located in Mountain View, California. Alestron, Inc. is a major distributor of Chinese software and business services in translation and localization. Alestron, Inc. is also a business information provider on China to news resellers such as Dow Jones and Financial Times.
For the last 15 plus years, Microsoft has been using its power to control the desktop software. Now things are changing, due to four factors: 1) Internet 2) Linux 3) US Government 4) Java.
Charles Liu will share his four years of experience as 1) a major Linux retailer, 2) a Linux/Network user in my business, 3) a Java networking developer.
Charles Liu is founder of ONE24 LLC, a company that researches, develops, integrates, markets, and sells Internet networking, e-commerce, middleware technologies, methodology, products, and services.
In an attempt to understand modern Chinese characters we would like to be able to trace them back step by step through the graphemic changes of the past several thousand years and get an explanation of the meaning of the original character. In this way we can understand exactly why modern characters are as they are.
Richard has built a character database of ancient Chinese characters:
All are decomposed, cross referenced and linked to their traditional equivalents and then to their simplified equivalents.
Richard will demonstrate the software and discuss issues of character etymology and character recognition and understanding.
Richard Sears has been a student of Chinese for 25 years. Currently he is involved in the localization into Chinese of JavaOS at Sun Microsystems.
Ken Lunde, who just finished writing (and typesetting) the 1128-page "CJKV Information Processing," will discuss in gory detail the tools and techniques he used to create this incredibly massive tome (doorstop, four-pound sleeping pill, or whethever you wish to call it).
Some important references for the book are:
Ken Lunde is Manager of CJKV Type Development at Adobe Systems Incorporated, and holds a PhD (1994) in linguistics from The University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also happens to be the author of "Understanding Japanese Information Processing" (O'Reilly & Associates, 1993), and the all new "CJKV Information Processing" (O'Reilly & Associates, 1999).
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