SILICON VALLEY LOCALIZATION FORUM

International Software Checklist

Author: Tiziana Perinotti, TGP Consulting

Does your application handle all of the basic Int'l requirements?

Use the following checklist to find out:

  • Non-English character handling (extended characters)
  • Importing and exporting of non-English characters
  • Sorting
  • Search and replace of non-English characters
  • Is the replace function appropriately case-sensitive?
  • Case conversion
  • Word and character boundaries
  • Hyphenation and Syllabification
  • Expansion of text
  • Dialog boxes and menu names need space to grow
  • Meaningful values of hot keys
  • Numbered and unnumbered messages
  • Are strings made up of substrings meaningful or correct in other languages?
  • If your software provides a spell-checker or a Thesaurus/Dictionary, does it work with foreign languages?
  • If your software has components developed by third party vendor, are these components internationalized (for example, filters or viewer displaying all special characters)?
  • Parsing input
  • Significance of special characters (e.g., @ means at in the US, but it means each in the UK, % in the US becomes pct in Belgium)
  • Kerning
  • Tracking
  • Address formats
  • Numeric formats, Separators, Negatives, and Decimal Tabs
  • Arithmetic operations (some countries have their own traditions about rounding numbers)
  • Monetary symbols and currency
  • Dates and times
  • Calendars (Gregorian, Era names, Buddhist, Islamic, Hebrew)
    Measurements scales and rounding problems
  • Page sizing (e.g., Int'l page sizes: A4, A3, B5)
  • Colors
  • Sound
  • Images And Symbols
  • Writing Style
  • Multi-Lingual Software Considerations
  • Double-Byte Support

Did you remember the following rules when developing your applications?

  • Never Embed Text Inside A Code Segment
  • Never Embed Graphics Inside A Code Segment
  • Never Hard Code The Position Or Size Of Any Element On The Screen
  • Leave Extra Space For Strings
  • Use Large Size String Buffers
  • Avoid Assuming A Certain Code Page
  • Avoid Assuming All Characters Are 7 Or 8 Bits
  • Avoid Concatenation And Replaceable Parameters
  • Don’t Use/Shift Old Identifiers When Adding New Strings To StringTables
  • Minimize The Number Of Constants
  • Allow Users To Change The Font And Font Size
  • Are You Using Language Sensitive Functions For Sorting And String Comparison?
  • Are You Using Language Sensitive Functions For Date, Time And Calendar Formats?
  • Are You Using Language Sensitive Functions For Numeric Formats?
  • Be Aware That Some Characters Do Not Exist In Foreign Keyboards

For detailed information on these issues and their resolutions, you can refer to the "SW Internationalization and Localization" book and courseware material.

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