System design for international use

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System design for international use

• What do the locals use and need?

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Some special problems of system and software
design in an international world

• What do you do if you are an international firm
  and you need to standardize your procedures?
• Converting English dialogues to a foreign screen
• Direction of write/read
• The problem of numerals
• Differences of date and time formats
• Addresses
• Telephone numbers
• How does business IT deal with time zones?

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End system design for international use
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Some of what needs to be internationalized...

• alphabets
• numbers
• sorting
• directionality of text, spacing and punctuation
• calendars, dates and time
• peoples names
• addresses
• telephone numbers
• measurement systems
• standard paper sizes

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Localized Kanji screen what is localized?
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Russian alphabet
Convert to a 33 character keyboard?
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Greek alpha-bet
24 characters is not bad but can you read it?
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Hungarian alphabet what does this mean to a
software designer? to a systems analyst?

• Lower case a,á,b,c,cs,d,e,é,f,g,gy,h,i,í,j,k,l,ly
  ,m,n,ny,o,ó,ö,õ,p,q,r,s,sz,t,ty,u,ú,ü,û,v,x,y,z,zs
  
• Upper case A,Á,B,C,CS,D,E,É,F,G,GY,H,I,Í,J,K,L,LY
  ,M,N,NY,O,Ó,Ö,Õ,P,Q,R,S,SZ,T,TY,U,Ú,Ü,Û,
  V,X,Y,Z,ZS

41, or at least 34 character keyboard!?
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Far Eastern script (Sanskrit in India Nepal)
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Vertical text read with English characters
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Upper case and lower case numbers? You are
kidding!

• Upper case Roman numerals
• I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX
  X
• Lower case Roman numerals
• i ii iii iv v vi vii viii
  ix x
• Also used in the US!

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Compare Arabic, Roman Chinese numerals
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(No Transcript)
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Calendar order and format
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Date according to calendar in use
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Date order
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Time formats
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Addresses .

• Permutations of Name
• Company
• Number Street name
• City, state, ZIP

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Telephone numbers
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IT and time zones

• How many time zones across the 50 state USA?
• How many time zones across the EU?
• How many time zones across Russia?
• How many time zones away is Bangalore, India?
• How do business systems deal with time zone
  distances?