International Resources

Introduction

The International Resources constitute the major portion of each Macintosh script system. The International Resources define how a script system implements its particular writing system and how it allows for language or regional variations within a writing system.

The Script Manager, the Text Utilities, QuickDraw, and the Font Manager all use the International Resources directly to handle text in various script systems. TextEdit makes indirect use of information in the International Resources through calls to the Script Manager and other managers.

A text application uses the International Resources indirectly whenever it makes a call to a script-aware routine in QuickDraw, the Text Utilities, or the Script Manager. It can also access the International Resources directly through Script Manager calls, in order to

• pass a resource handle or pointer as a parameter to a text-handling routine

• extract formatting information from a table within a resource

• modify the contents of a resource, to customize text handling

Your most common reason to access the International Resources may be to get a handle or pointer to pass to a text-handling routine. For that task, you do not need the information in this document.

You will find this document useful if your application needs information about the internal structure of one or more International Resources. If you need a particular resource table to perform a specific operation, such as formatting currencies or dates, extracting number parts, or converting script-independent tokens to the text of a particular script system, this document will help you.

You will find this document useful if your application requires a custom localized version of some text-handling feature. To provide that feature, you can modify one or more of the International Resources and supply that modified version with your application or its documents. In this way, you can localize the formats of numbers, currency, time, dates, and measurement; you can localize string comparison and word selection; you can modify the conversion of strings to tokens; you can specify custom character-rendering behavior; and you can specify custom transliteration rules.

You will also find this document useful if you are creating a new script system. A complete script system requires a full set of the appropriate international resources, certain keyboard resources, and one or more fonts.