Internationalization Support in X11R6

Internationalization Support in X11R6

X11R6 internationalization support is provided on the X client side; that is, the application must take care of such support instead of relying on the X server. No server changes are necessary, and the protocol is unchanged. Full backward compatibility is preserved, so a new internationalized application can run on an old server.

Note: X11R6 internationalization refers to features in X11R5 and X11R6. X uses existing internationalization standards to do its internationalization support; there are no X-specific interfaces to set and change locale. Internationalized X applications receive no help from X when attempting multilingual support. No locales or special process states are peculiar to X.

This section covers the following topics:

"Limitations of X11R6 in Supporting Internationalization" discusses vertical text, character sets, and Xlib interface changes.
"Resource Names" covers encoding of resource names.
"Getting X Internationalization Started" describes initialization of Xlib and toolkit programming.
"Fontsets" explains specifying, creating, and using fontsets.
"Text Rendering Routines" discusses the XmbDrawText(), XmbDrawString(), and XmbDrawImageString() functions.
"New Text Extents Functions" describes a few new extents-related functions, including XFontSetExtents.

Limitations of X11R6 in Supporting Internationalization
Resource Names
Getting X Internationalization Started
Fontsets
Text Rendering Routines
New Text Extents Functions