scuffed-code/icu4c
2000-09-19 21:46:01 +00:00
..
data ICU-603 Updated the Thai word and line break files based 2000-09-19 21:03:25 +00:00
docs ICU-558 document converters, esp. MBCS 2000-08-18 00:26:52 +00:00
source ICU-601 use lighter font switching and typical Unix man style. 2000-09-19 21:46:01 +00:00
license.html ICU-161 IPSL version needs not to be changed. 2000-01-11 19:30:59 +00:00
readme.html ICU-403 add version number documentation 2000-08-15 18:41:24 +00:00

<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>ReadMe for ICU</title>
</head>

<body lang="en-US">

<H4>Late breaking news:</H4>
<UL>
  <LI><A HREF="#hpux_data_note">HP/UX shared library loading</A></LI>
  <li><a href="#buffer_overflow">Important change of error codes from streaming conversion functions</a></li>
</UL>

<HR>
<div class=Section1>

<h2>ReadMe: International Components for Unicode</h2>

<p>Version: May 30, 2000</p>


<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>


<p>COPYRIGHT: <br>
Copyright (c) 1997-2000 International Business Machines Corporation and others.
All Rights Reserved.</p>


<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

</div>


<p><br>
&nbsp; &nbsp; </p>

<h3><u>Contents</u></h3>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#WhatContain">What
     the International Components for Unicode Contain</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#API">API overview</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a
     href="#PlatformDependencies">Platform Dependencies</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#ImportantNotes">Important
     Installation Notes</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#HowToInstall">How
     to Install/Build</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#datahandling">How
     ICU handles data</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#CharsetConvert">Character
     Set Conversion Information</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#VersionNumbers">Version Numbers in ICU</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#ProgrammingNotes">Programming
     Notes</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#WhereToFindMore">Where
     to Find More Information</a></li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l3 level1 lfo3;tab-stops:list .5in'><a href="#SubmittingComments">Submitting
     Comments, Requesting Features and Reporting Bugs</a></li>
</ul>

<h3><a name=introduction></a><u>Introduction</u></h3>

<p>Today's software market is a global one in which it is desirable to develop
and maintain one application that supports a wide variety of national
languages. International Components for Unicode provides the following tools to
help you write language independent applications: </p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>UnicodeString supporting the
     Unicode 3.0 standard</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Resource bundles for storing
     and accessing localized information</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Number formatters for
     converting binary numbers into text strings for meaningful display</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Date and time formatters for
     converting internal time data into text strings for meaningful display</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Message formatters for
     putting together sequences of strings, numbers dates and other format to
     create messages</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Text collation supporting
     language sensitive comparison of strings</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Text boundary analysis for
     finding characters, word and sentence boundaries</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Changing simple data files
     rather than modifying program code easily localizes applications written
     using these tools</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l5 level1 lfo6;tab-stops:list .5in'>Over 150 locales supported.
     Visit <a
     href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/localeexplorer">LocaleExplorer
     (http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/localeexplorer)</a>
     site for a demonstration and a full list of supported locales or <a
     href="docs/supp_loc.html">click here for a table of supported locales</a>.</li>
</ul>

<p>It is possible to support additional locales by adding more locale data
files, with no code changes. </p>

<p>Please refer to POSIX programmer's Guide for details on what the ISO locale
ID means. </p>

<p>Your comments are important to making this release successful.&nbsp; We are
committed to fixing any bugs, and will also use your feedback to help plan
future releases. </p>

<p style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:.5in'><b><u>IMPORTANT</u>: Please make
sure you understand the <a href="license.html">Copyright and License
information</a>.</b></p>

<p style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:.5in'>&nbsp;</p>

<h3><a name=WhatContain></a><u>What the International Components for Unicode
Contain</u></h3>

<p>There are two ways to download the ICU releases, </p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l10 level1 lfo9;tab-stops:list .5in'><strong>Official Release
     Snapshot:</strong><b><br>
     </b>If you want to use ICU (as opposed to developing it), your best bet is
     to download an official, packaged ICU version of the ICU source
     code.&nbsp; These versions are tested more thoroughly than day-to-day
     development builds of the system, and they are packaged in zip and tar
     files for convenient download.&nbsp; These packaged files can be found at <a
     href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/index.html">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/index.html</a>.<br>
     If packaged snapshot is named <b>ICUXXXXXX.zip </b>, XXXXXX is the release
     version number.<br>
     Please unzip this file.&nbsp; It will re-construct the source directory. </li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l10 level1 lfo9;tab-stops:list .5in'><strong>CVS Source
     Repository:</strong><b><br>
     </b>If you are interested in developing features, patches, or bug fixes
     for ICU, you should probably be working with the latest version of the ICU
     source code. You will need to check the code out of our CVS repository to
     ensure that you have the most recent version of all of the files. There
     are several ways to do this:</li>
 <ul type=circle>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l10 level2 lfo9;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>WebCVS:<br>
      If you want to browse the code and only make occasional downloads, you
      may want to use WebCVS. It provides a convenient, web-based interface for
      browsing and downloading the latest version of the ICU source code and
      documentation. You can also view each file's revision history, display
      the differences between individual revisions, determine which revisions
      were part of which official release, and so on. </li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l10 level2 lfo9;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>WinCVS:<br>
      If you will be doing serious work on ICU, you should probably install a
      CVS client on your own machine so that you can do batch operations
      without going through the WebCVS interface. On Windows, we suggest the
      WinCVS client. The following is the example instruction on how to download
      ICU via WinCVS: <br>
      1.Install the WinCVS client, which you can download from the WinCVS home
      page. <br>
      2.In the WinCVS preferences, specify your CVSRoot to be
      &quot;:pserver:anoncvs@oss.software.ibm.com:/usr/cvs/icu&quot;<br>
      with the password &quot;anoncvs&quot;. To enter the CVSRoot value, select
      &quot;Preferences&quot; from the &quot;Cvs Admin&quot; pull-down menu.
      &nbsp;&nbsp; Authentication should be set to &quot;'passwd' file on the
      cvs server&quot;. <br>
      3.To &quot;extract&quot; the most recent version of ICU, select
      &quot;Checkout module&quot; from the &quot;Cvs Admin&quot; menu. Specify
      &quot;icu&quot; for the module name. </li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l10 level2 lfo9;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>CVS command line:<br>
      You can also check out the repository anonymously on UNIX using the
      following commands, after first setting your CVSROOT to point to the ICU
      repository: <br>
      <br>
      export CVSROOT=:pserver:anoncvs@oss.software.ibm.com:/usr/cvs/icu<br>
      cvs login CVS password: anoncvs<br>
      cvs checkout icu<br>
      cvs logout</li>
 </ul>
</ul>

<p>For more details on how to download ICU directly from the web site, please
also see <a
href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/index.html">http:/oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/index.html</a></p>

<p>Below, <b>$Root</b> is the placement of the icu directory in your file
system, like &quot;drive:\...\icu&quot; in your environment.
&quot;drive:\...&quot; stands for any drive and any directory on that drive
that you chose to install icu into.</p>

<p><b>The following files describe the code drop:</b> <br>
&nbsp; <br>
&nbsp; </p>

<table border=1 cellpadding=0 style='mso-cellspacing:1.5pt;mso-padding-alt:
 0in 0in 0in 0in'>
 <tr>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>readme.html (this file)</p>
  </td>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>describes the International Components for Unicode</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>license.html</p>
  </td>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>contains IBM's public license</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
</table>

<p><b>The following directories contain source code and data files:</b> <br>
&nbsp; <br>
&nbsp; </p>

<table border=1 cellpadding=0 width=623 style='width:467.25pt;mso-cellspacing:
 1.5pt;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 0in 0in'>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root\source\common\</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>The utility classes, such as ResourceBundle, Unicode,
  Locale, UnicodeString. The codepage conversion library API, UnicodeConverter.</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root\source\i18n\</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>The collation source files, Collator, RuleBasedCollator
  and CollationKey.&nbsp; <br>
  The text boundary API, which locates character, word, sentence, and&nbsp; <br>
  line breaks.&nbsp; <br>
  The format API, which formats and parses data in numeric or date format to
  and from text.</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root\source\test\intltest\</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>A test suite including all C++ APIs. For information about
  running the test suite, see <a href="docs/intltest.html">docs/intltest.html</a>.</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root/source/test/cintltst/</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>A test suite including all C APIs. For information about
  running the test suite, see&nbsp; <a href="docs/cintltst.html">docs/cintltst.html.</a></p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root/data/</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>The Unicode 3.0 data file.&nbsp; Please see <a
  href="http://www.unicode.org/">http://www.unicode.org/</a> for more
  information.&nbsp; <br>
  This directory also contains the resource files for all international
  objects.&nbsp; These files are of three types:&nbsp; </p>
  <ul type=disc>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>TXT files contain
       general locale data.&nbsp;</li>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>RES files contain
       non-portable locale data files which are generated by the <strong>genrb</strong>
       tool.</li>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>COL files are non-portable
       packed binary collation data files which are created by the <strong>gencol</strong>
       tool.&nbsp;</li>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>UCM files which
       contain mapping tables {from,to} Unicode in text format</li>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>CNV files are
       non-portable packed binary conversion data generated by the <strong>makeconv</strong>
       tool.</li>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>icudata.dll file
       contains data files in a dynamic loadable library format. At this
       moment, this file contains CNV files, converter aliases, timezone data
       and Unicode character names. Please read <a href="docs/udata.html">udata.html</a>
       for more information.</li>
   <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
       auto;mso-list:l12 level1 lfo12;tab-stops:list .5in'>icudata.dat file
       contains data files in a memory mapped file format. At this moment, this
       file contains CNV files, converter aliases, timezone data and Unicode
       character names. Please read <a href="docs/udata.html">udata.html</a>
       for more information.</li>
  </ul>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root/source/tools</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>Tools for generating the data files. Data files are
  generated by invoking $Root/source/tools/makedata.bat on Win32 or
  $Root/source/make install on Unix.</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td width="20%" style='width:20.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root/source/samples</p>
  </td>
  <td width="80%" style='width:80.0%;padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>Various sample programs that use ICU</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
</table>

<p>&nbsp;<b>The following directories are populated when you've built the
framework:</b> <br>
&nbsp; (on Unix, replace $Root with the value given to the file
&quot;configure&quot;) <br>
&nbsp; </p>

<table border=1 cellpadding=0 style='mso-cellspacing:1.5pt;mso-padding-alt:
 0in 0in 0in 0in'>
 <tr>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$Root/include/</p>
  </td>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>contains all the public header files.</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>$output</p>
  </td>
  <td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
  <p class=MsoNormal>contains the libraries for static/dynamic linking or
  executable programs.</p>
  </td>
 </tr>
</table>

<p><b>The following diagram shows the main directory structure of the
International Components for Unicode:</b> </p>

<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; icu-NNNN</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;output&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>icu</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; _____|_____<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>______________|______________________________</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>| &nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|</pre>
<pre> libraries<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>programs &nbsp;include&nbsp;data&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; source&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|</pre>
<pre> (built)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>(built)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>(built)&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;readme.html license.html</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>_________________|__________________________</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; |<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>common<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>i18n&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>test<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>extra<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>tools<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>samples</pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>&nbsp; &nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></pre>
<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ___|___&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>___|_________________</pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>| </pre>
<pre><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>intltest cintltst makeconv ctestfw genrb<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>....</pre>

<h3><a name=API></a><u>API Overview</u></h3>

<p>In the International Components for Unicode, there are two categories: </p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l15 level1 lfo15;tab-stops:list .5in'>Low-level Unicode/Resource
     Attributes: (<strong>icuuc</strong> library)</li>
 <ul type=circle>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l15 level2 lfo15;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><a
      href="docs/utilCL.html">Utility Classes</a></li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l15 level2 lfo15;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><a
      href="docs/conversion_interface.htm">Conversion Interface</a></li>
 </ul>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l15 level1 lfo15;tab-stops:list .5in'>High-level Unicode
     Internationalization: (<strong>icui18n</strong> library)</li>
 <ul type=circle>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l15 level2 lfo15;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><a
      href="docs/boundCL.html">Text Boundary Classes</a></li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l15 level2 lfo15;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><a
      href="docs/collateCL.html">Collation Classes</a></li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l15 level2 lfo15;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><a
      href="docs/formatCL.html">Formatting Classes</a></li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l15 level2 lfo15;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>Transliterator
      Classes</li>
 </ul>
</ul>

<p>See <A HREF="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/develop/codestds.html">International Components for Unicode Coding Guidelines</A>
for a discussion of code conventions common to all library classes. </p>

<p>See also <a href="../html/aindex.html">html/aindex.html</a> for an alphabetical
index, and <a href="../html/HIERjava.html">html/HIERjava.html</a> for a
hierarchical index to detailed API documentation. <br>
&nbsp; <br>
&nbsp; </p>

<h3><a name=PlatformDependencies></a><u>Platform Dependencies</u></h3>

<p>The platform dependencies have been isolated into the following 4 files: </p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l14 level1 lfo18;tab-stops:list .5in'><u>platform.h.in:</u>
     Platform-dependent typedefs and defines:</li>
</ul>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l13 level1 lfo20;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>XP_CPLUSPLUS is defined for C++</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l13 level1 lfo20;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>bool_t, TRUE and FALSE, int8_t, int16_t etc.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l13 level1 lfo20;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>U_EXPORT and U_IMPORT for specifying dynamic library
import and export</p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l6 level1 lfo23;tab-stops:list .5in'><u>putil.c:</u>
     platform-dependent implementations of various functions that are platform
     dependent: (declared in putil.h)</li>
</ul>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo25;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>icu_isNaN, icu_isInfinite(double), icu_getNaN();
icu_getInfinity for handling special floating point values</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo25;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>icu_tzset, icu_timezone, icu_tzname and time for
reading platform specific time and timezone information</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo25;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>icu_getDefaultDataDirectory, icu_getDefaultLocaleID for
reading the locale setting and data directory</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo25;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>icu_isBigEndian for finding the endianess of the
platform</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo25;tab-stops:
list .5in'><![if !supportLists]><span style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Symbol'><3E><span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span><![endif]>icu_nextDouble is used specifically by the ChoiceFormat
API.</p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l7 level1 lfo28;tab-stops:list .5in'><u>mutex.h and mutex.cpp</u>:
     Code for doing synchronization in multithreaded applications. If you wish
     to use International Components for Unicode in a multithreaded
     application, you must provide a synchronization primitive that the classes
     can use to protect their global data against simultaneous modifications.
     See <a href="docs/mutex.html">docs/mutex.html</a> for more information.</li>
 <ul type=circle>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l7 level2 lfo28;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>We supply sample
      implementations for WinNT, Win95, Win98, Sun/Solaris, RedHat/Linux, HP-UX
      and for AIX on an RS/6000.</li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l7 level2 lfo28;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>If you are changing
      the platform-dependent files, ptypes.h and putil.h may also be interesting,
      but shouldn't have to be changed. If you think any other files than the
      ones mentioned above have platform dependencies, please contact us.</li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l7 level2 lfo28;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>For the Intltest test
      suite, intltest.cpp in &quot;icu\source\test\intltest\&quot; contains the
      method pathnameInContext, which must also be adapted to any new platform.</li>
 </ul>
</ul>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l14 level1 lfo18;tab-stops:list .5in'>udata.h: The data-accessing
     interface in ICU is implemented such that there is a lot of flexibility
     for reading a data file.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </span>Each
     platform can tune the performance of file accessing for its environment by
     choosing to implement one of the following options:</li>
</ul>

<ul type=disc>
 <ul type=circle>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l7 level2 lfo28;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>DLL</li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l7 level2 lfo28;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>Memory map</li>
  <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
      auto;mso-list:l7 level2 lfo28;tab-stops:list 1.0in'>Plain text </li>
 </ul>
</ul>

<h3><a name=ImportantNotes></a><u>Important Installation Notes </u></h3>

<p><strong>Win32 Platform</strong></p>

<p>If you are building on the Win32 platform, it is important that you
understand a few build details: </p>

<p><u>DLL directories and the PATH setting:</u> As delivered, the International
Components for Unicode build as several DLLs. These DLLs are placed in the
directories &quot;icu\bin\Debug&quot; and &quot;icu\bin\Release&quot;.&nbsp;
You must add either of these directories to the PATH environment variable in
your system, or any executables you build will not be able to access
International Components for Unicode libraries. Alternatively, you can copy the
DLL files into a directory already in your PATH, but we do not recommend this
-- you can wind up with multiple copies of the DLL, and wind up using the wrong
one. </p>

<p><u>To change your PATH:</u>&nbsp; Do this under NT by using the System
control panel. Pick the &quot;Environment&quot; tab, select the variable PATH
in the lower box.&nbsp; In the &quot;value&quot; box, append the string
&quot;;drive:\...\icu\bin\Debug&quot; at the end of the path string.&nbsp; If
there is nothing there, just type in &quot;drive:\...\icu\bin\Debug&quot;.
Click the Set button, then the Ok button. </p>

<p><u>Link with Runtime libraries:</u> All the DLLs link with the C runtime
library &quot;Debug Multithreaded DLL&quot; or &quot;Multithreaded DLL.&quot;
(This is changed through the Project Settings dialog, on the C/C++ tab, under
Code Generation.) It is important that any executable or other DLL you build
which uses the International Components for Unicode DLLs links with these
runtime libraries as well. If you do not do this, you will seemingly get memory
errors when you run the executable. <br>
&nbsp; </p>

<p><a name=OS390><strong>OS/390 Platform</strong></p>

<p>If you are building on the OS/390 UNIX System Services platform, it is
important that you understand a few details:</p>
<ul>
    <li>The gnu utilities gmake and gzip/gunzip are needed and can be obtained for
        OS/390 from <a href="http://www.mks.com/">http://www.mks.com/</a>.
        Search for OS/390, register, and follow download directions.</li>
    <li>Encoding considerations: The source code assumes that it is compiled
        with codepage 1047 (to be exact, the UNIX System Services variant of it).
        The pax command converts all of the source code files from ASCII
        to codepage 1047 (USS) EBCDIC. However, some files are binary files
        and must not be converted, or must be converted back to their original
        state.
        Those files are:<ul>
        <li>All the .brk files located in the icu/data directory (icu/data/*.brk)</li>
        <li>icu/source/test/testdata/uni-text.txt</li>
        <li>icu/source/test/testdata/th18057.txt</li>
        </ul>
        Such a conversion can be done using iconv:<br>
        <code>iconv -f IBM-1047 -t ISO8859-1 uni-text.txt > uni-text.txt</code></li>
    <li>DLL directories and the LIBPATH setting:
        Building and testing ICU needs the ICU libraries on the LIBPATH.
        In other words, the LIBPATH should contain
        (each path prepended with the root directory that contains the icu directory):
        <ul>
            <li>icu/source/common</li>
            <li>icu/source/i18n</li>
            <li>icu/source/tools/ctestfw</li>
            <li>icu/source/tools/toolutil</li>
            <li>icu/source/extra/ustdio</li>
        </ul></li>
    <li><p>OS/390 supports both native S/390 hexadecimal floating point and, with Version
        2.6 and later, IEEE binary
        floating point. This is a compile time option. Applications built with IEEE
        should use ICU dlls that are
        built with IEEE (and vice versa). The environment variable IEEE390=1 will cause
        the OS/390 version
        of ICU to be built with IEEE floating point. The default is native hexadecimal
        floating point.<br>
        <em>Important: </em>Currently (ICU 1.4.2), native floating point support
        is sufficient for codepage conversion, resource bundle and UnicodeString operations,
        but the Format APIs, especially ChoiceFormat, require IEEE binary floating point.</p>
        <p>Examples for configuring ICU:<br>
        Debug build: <code>IEEE390=1 ./configure</code><br>
        Release build: <code>CFLAGS=-2 IEEE390=1 ./configure</code></p></li>
    <li>Since the default make on OS/390 is not gmake, pkgdata tool requires that the environment
        variable MAKE be set to path to gmake.</li> 
    <li>The makedep executable that is used with the OS/390 ICU build
        process is not shipped with ICU. It is available at the
        <a href="http://www.s390.ibm.com/products/oe/bpxa1ty2.html">OS/390 UNIX - Tools and Toys</a>
        site. The PATH
        environment variable should be updated to contain the location of this
        executable prior to build.
        Alternatively, makedep may be moved into an existing PATH directory.</li>
    <li>When running the test suite, the TZ environment variable should be set to
        export TZ=&quot;PST8PDT&quot; so
        that time zone comparisons are correct.</li>
</ul>

<p><a name=OS400><strong>OS/400 Platform</strong></a></p>

 ICU Reference Release 1.4.0 contains partial support for the  400
platform, but additional work by the user is currently needed to get
it to build completely.
 A future release of the ICU should work out-of-the-box
under OS/400.
<UL>
   <LI> Requirements:
      <UL>
          <LI>    QSHELL interpreter installed (install base option 30,  operating
system)
         <LI>    QShell Utilities,  PRPQ  5799-XEH
          <LI>     ILE C++ for AS/400,  PRPQ 5799-GDW
           <LI>    GNU facilities  (the gnu facilities are currently available by request only.  Send e-mail to <A HREF="mailto:rchasgo400@us.ibm.com">rchasgo400@us.ibm.com</A> )

      <P></UL> <!-- end requirements -->
   <LI> Build environment setup:
      <OL>
<LI> Create AS400 target library.   This library will be the target  for the
resulting  modules, programs and service programs.  You will specify this
library on the OUTPUTDIR environment variable in step 2.
<LI>  Set up the following environment variables in your build process (use
ADDENVVAR or WRKENVVAR CL commands)
<UL>
      CC  - '/usr/bin/icc'<BR>
      CXX  - ' /usr/bin/icc'<BR>
      MAKE   - '/usr/bin/gmake'<BR>
      OUTPUTDIR  - <I>identifies target as400 library for *module, *pgm and
*srvpgm objects</I>
<P></UL>
<LI> Add QCXXN,  to your build process library list.  This results in the
resolution of CRTCPPMOD used by the icc compiler
<LI> Configure the Makefiles (see configure below)  Note:  Verify that the
mh-os400 configure  file is used.
<UL>      
   <LI> Run 'configure --host=as400-os400' 
   <LI> The 'clean' and 'install' targets will not work without changes
because of symbolic links. To delete the target module, program, or service programs replace <TT>rm -rf</TT> with <B>$(RMV)</B>, and in the
   library installation targets (install-library) change
   <TT>$(INSTALL)</TT> to <B><TT>$(INSTALL-S)</TT></B>.
<P></UL> 

<LI> gmake -e   (-e to pickup the compilers)
      <P></OL> <!-- end build environment -->
</UL>

Note on NULL pointer checks:
<UL>
In common/ucnv.c and common/unistr.c (search for U_MAX_PTR), there are
additional checks for NULL pointers.  This is because pointer
comparison works differently on the AS/400 architecture.
</UL>

<h3><a name=HowToInstall></a><u>How to Install/Build on Win NT</u></h3>

<p>Building International Components for Unicode requires: </p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l16 level1 lfo31;tab-stops:list .5in'>Microsoft NT 3.51 or above</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l16 level1 lfo31;tab-stops:list .5in'>Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0
     (Service Pack 2 is required to work with the release build of max speed
     optimization).</li>
</ul>

<p>The steps are: </p>

<ol start=1 type=1>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Unzip the icu-XXXX.zip
     file, type &quot;unzip -a icu-XXXX.zip -d drive:\directory&quot; under
     command prompt or use WinZip.&nbsp; drive:\directory\icu is the root
     ($Root) directory (you may but don't need to place &quot;icu&quot; into another
     directory). If you change the root, you will change the project settings
     accordingly in EACH makefile in the project, updating the &quot;include&quot;
     and &quot;library&quot; paths.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Set the environment
     variable <strong>ICU_DATA</strong>, the full pathname of the data
     directory, to indicate where the locale data files and conversion mapping
     tables are.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Start Microsoft Visual C++
     6.0.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Choose &quot;File&quot;
     menu and select &quot;Open WorkSpace&quot;.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>In the file chooser, choose
     icu\source\allinone\allinone.dsw. Open this workspace.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>This workspace includes all
     the International Components for Unicode libraries, necessary tools as
     well as intltest and cintltest test suite projects.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Set the active Project.
     Choose &quot;Project&quot; menu and select &quot;Set active project&quot;.
     In the submenu, select &quot;all&quot; workspace.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Set the active
     configuration (&quot;Win32 Debug&quot; or &quot;Win32 Release&quot;) and
     make sure this matches your PATH setting as described in the previous
     chapter. (See note below.)</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Choose &quot;Build&quot;
     menu and select &quot;Rebuild All&quot;. If you want to build the Debug
     and Release configurations at the same time, choose &quot;Build&quot; menu
     and select &quot;Batch Build...&quot; instead (and mark all configurations
     as checked), then click the button named &quot;Rebuild All&quot;.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>The &quot;all&quot;
     workspace will build all the test programs as well as the tools for
     generating binary locale data files.&nbsp; The &quot;makedata&quot;
     project will be run automatically to convert the locale data files from
     text format into icudata.dll.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Save the value of the <strong>TZ</strong>
     environment variable and then set it to <strong>PST8PDT</strong>.&nbsp; </li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Reopen the
     &quot;allinone&quot; project file and run the &quot;intltest&quot; test.
     &nbsp; Reset the <strong>TZ</strong> value.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>To run the C test suite,
     set &quot;cintltst&quot; as the active project, repeat steps 11 and then
     run the &quot;cintltst&quot; test..</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l11 level1 lfo34;tab-stops:list .5in'>Build and run as outlined
     above.</li>
</ol>

<p><b>Note: </b>To set the active configuration, two different possibilities are:
</p>

<ul type=disc>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l4 level1 lfo37;tab-stops:list .5in'>Choose &quot;Build&quot;
     menu, select &quot;Set Active Configuration&quot;, and select &quot;Win32
     Release&quot; or &quot;Win32 Debug&quot;.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l4 level1 lfo37;tab-stops:list .5in'>Another way is to select
     &quot;Customize&quot; in the &quot;Tools&quot; menu, select the
     &quot;Toolbars&quot; tab, enable &quot;Build&quot; instead of &quot;Build
     Minibar&quot;, and click on &quot;Close&quot;. This will bring up a
     toolbar which you can move aside the other permanent toolbars at the top
     of the MSVC window. The advantage is that you now have an easy-to-reach
     pop-up menu that will always show the currently selected active
     configuration.&nbsp; Or, you can drag the project and configuration selections
     and drop them on the menu bar for later selection.</li>
</ul>

<p>It is also possible to build each library individually, using the workspaces
in each respective directory. They have to be built in the following order: <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1. common <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. i18n <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 3. makedata (which invokes makeconv,
genrb, gencol, genccode etc.)<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4. ctestfw <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 5. intltest and cintltst, if you
want to run the test suite. <br>
Regarding the test suite, please read the directions in <a
href="docs/intltest.html">docs/intltest.html</a> and <a
href="docs/cintltst.html">docs/cintltst.html</a> </p>

<h3>How to Install/Build on Unix</h3>

<p>There is a set of Makefiles for Unix that supports Linux w/gcc, Solaris
w/gcc and Workshop CC, AIX w/xlc and OS/390 with C++.</p>

<p>Building International Components for Unicode on Unix requires: </p>

<p>A UNIX C++ compiler, (gcc, cc, xlc_r, etc...) installed on the target
machine. A recent version of GNU make (3.7+).&nbsp;&nbsp; OS/390 gnu utilities
for both make (gmake) and zip (gzip/gunzip) can be found at the MKS web site at
<a href="http://www.mks.com">http://www.mks.com</a>. &nbsp; Please do a search
on &quot;os/390&quot;.</p>

<p>The steps are: </p>

<ol start=1 type=1>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Unzip the icuXXXX.tar (or
     icuXXXX.tgz) file.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Before running the test programs
     or samples, please set the environment variable <strong>ICU_DATA</strong>,
     the full pathname of the data directory, to indicate where the locale data
     files and conversion mapping tables are.&nbsp; If this variable is not
     set, the default user data directory will be used.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Change directory to the
     &quot;icu/source&quot;.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>If it is not already set,
     please set the executable flag for the following files (by executing
     'chmod +x' command): configure, install.sh and config.*, </li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>You also need to set other
     environment variables for different build systems. Use this <a
     href="docs/build_env.htm">table</a> or provided <a
     href="source/runConfigureICU">script</a>.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Type &quot;./configure&quot;
     or type &quot;./configure --help&quot; to print the available options.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Type &quot;make&quot; to compile
     the libraries and all the data files.&nbsp; On OS/390, both IEEE binary
     floating point and native S/390 hexadecimal floating point calculations
     are supported. &nbsp; The default is to build with native floating-point
     support.&nbsp; Please set the environment variable IEEE390=1 if you would
     like to make the ICU DLLs with IEEE floating point support.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Optionally, type &quot;make
     check&quot; to verify the test suite.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l2 level1 lfo40;tab-stops:list .5in'>Type &quot;Make
     install&quot; to install.</li>
</ol>

<p>It is also possible to build each library individually, using the Makefiles
in each respective directory. They have to be built in the following order: <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1. common <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. i18n <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 3. makeconv <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4. genrb<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 5. gencol<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 6. gentz<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 7. genccode<br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 8. ctestfw <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 9. intltest and cintltst, if you
want to run the test suite. <br>
Regarding the test suite, please read the directions in <a
href="docs/intltest.html">docs/intltest.html</a> and <a
href="docs/cintltst.html">docs/cintltst.html</a> </p>

<P>
<A NAME="hpux_data_note">
<H4>Note about HP/UX data libraries:</H4>
<UL> 
   <LI>HP/UX has a documented characteristic where the shl_unload() function
     always unloads a library, regardless of how many times the library has 
     been loaded.  Most operating systems reference-count libraries as they 
     are opened.  In the future (Jitterbug 414) this may be corrected in the
     ICU, but at present we work around this problem by simply NOT ever 
     unloading shared libraries.  This means that once a data library
     is loaded (ex: libicudata.sl) by a process, it cannot be
     unloaded and replaced without stopping and restarting the process.
</UL>

<h1><a name=datahandling>How ICU handles data</a></h1>

<span style='mso-bookmark:datahandling'></span>

<h3><u>How to add a locale data file</u></h3>

<p>To add locale data files to International Components for Unicode do the
following: </p>

<p style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:.5in'>1. Create a file containing the
key-value pairs which value you are overriding from the parent locale data
file. <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Make sure the filename is the locale ID with the extension
&quot;.txt&quot;. We recommend you copy parent file and change the values <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; that need to be changed, remove all other key-pairs. Be sure
to update the locale ID key (the outmost brace) with <br>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; the name of the locale id your a creating.</p>

<p style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:.5in'>2. Name the file with locale ID
you are creating with a &quot;.txt&quot; at the end.</p>

<p style='margin-right:1.0in;margin-left:1.0in'>e.g.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
fr_BF.txt <br>
Would create a locale that inherits all the key-value pairs from fr.txt.</p>

<p style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:.5in'>3. Add the name of that file
(without the &quot;.txt&quot; extension) as a single line in
&quot;index.txt&quot; file in the default locale directory (icu/data/).</p>

<p style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:.5in'>4. Regenerate the data DLL
file.&nbsp; Please see &quot;<a href="#HowToInstall">How to Install</a>&quot;
section for more details on how to verify the ICU release.</p>

<p><a name=addrbdatatoapp></a><b><u><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>How to add
resource bundle data to your application</span></u></b> </p>

<p>Adding resource bundle data to your application is quite simple: </p>

<p>Create resource bundle files with the right format and names in a directory
for resource bundles you create in your application directory tree.(for more
information of that format of these files see <a
href="../icuhtml/ResourceBundle.html#DOC.DOCU">resource bundle documentation</a>
or&nbsp; <a
href="http://www.ibm.com/java/education/international-unicode/unicodec.html">resource
bundle format)</a>. <br>
Please note that resource bundle tag names should contain only invariant 7-bit
ASCII characters (e.g. ones from the following set: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, &lt;SP&gt;,
&quot;, %, &amp;, `, (, ), *, +, ,, -, ., /, :, ;, &lt;, =, &gt;, ?, _).<br>
Use that same directory name (absolute path) when instantiating a resource
bundle at run time.</p>

<h3><a name=WhereCollation></a><u>Where Collation Data is stored</u></h3>

<p>Collation data is stored in a single directory on a local disk. Each
locale's data is stored in a corresponding ASCII text file indicated by a
&quot;CollationElements&quot; tag . For instance, the data for de_CH is stored
with a tag &quot;CollationElements&quot; in a file named &quot;de_CH.txt&quot;.
Reading the collation data from these files can be time-consuming, especially
for large pieces of data that occur in languages such as Japanese. For this
reason, the Collation Framework implements a second file format, a
performance-optimized, non-portable, binary format. These binary files are
generated automatically by the framework the first time a collation table is
parsed. They have names of the form &quot;de_CH.col&quot;. Once the files are
generated by the framework, future loading of those collations occur from the
binary file, rather than the text file, at much higher speed. </p>

<p>In general, you don't have to do anything special with these files. They can
be generated directly by using the &quot;gencol&quot; tool.&nbsp; In addition,
they can also be generated and used automatically by the framework, without
intervention on your part. However, there are situations in which you will have
to regenerate them. To do so, you must manually delete the &quot;.col&quot;
files from your collation data directory and re-run the gencol tool.</p>

<p>You will need to regenerate your &quot;.col&quot; files in the following
circumstances: </p>

<ol start=1 type=1>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l0 level1 lfo43;tab-stops:list .5in'>You are moving your data to
     another platform.&nbsp; Since the &quot;.col&quot; files are non-portable,
     you must make sure they are regenerated.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l0 level1 lfo43;tab-stops:list .5in'><b>DO NOT </b>copy them from
     one platform to another.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l0 level1 lfo43;tab-stops:list .5in'>You have changed the
     &quot;CollationElements&quot; data in the locale's &quot;.txt&quot;
     file.&nbsp; Note that if you change the default rules for some reason,
     which underlie all collations, then you will have to rebuild ALL your
     &quot;.col&quot; files, since they all are merged with the default rule
     set.</li>
</ol>

<h3><a name=CharsetConvert></a><u>Character Set Conversion Information</u></h3>

<p>The charset conversion library provides ways to convert simple text strings
(e.g., char*) such as ISO 8859-1 to and from Unicode. The objective is to
provide clean, simple, reliable, portable and adaptable data structures and
algorithms to support the International Components for Unicode's character
codeset Conversion APIs. The conversion data in the library originated from the
NLTC lab in IBM. The IBM character set conversion tables are publicly available
in the published IBM document called &quot;CHARACTER DATA REPRESENTATION
ARCHITECTURE - REFERENCE AND REGISTRY&quot;. The character set conversion
library includes single-byte, double-byte and some UCS encodings to and from Unicode.
This document can be ordered through Mechanicsberg and it comes with 2 CD ROMs
which have machine-readable conversion tables on them. The license agreement is
included in International Components for Unicode agreement. </p>

<p>Click <a href="data/convrtrs.txt">here</a> to view converters implemented in
ICU. To see converters in action, please visit <a
href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/localeexplorer/?converter&amp;">
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/localeexplorer/?converter&amp;</a></p>

<p>To order the document in the US you can call 1-800-879-2755 and request
document number SC09-2190-00. The cost of this publication is $75.00 US not
including tax. </p>

<h3><a name=VersionNumbers></a><u>Version Numbers in ICU</u></h3>

<p>ICU supports extensive versioning of its code and data.  Versioning
allows clients to determine when parts of ICU change, and what the
effect of the change is.

<p>ICU as a whole has a version number.  ICU components such as Collator
have their own distinct version numbers.  Each resource bundle,
including all the locale data resource bundles, has its own version
number.  Individual tagged items within a resource bundle have their
own version numbers.

<p>All version numbers are in the form of a UVersionInfo structure, which
is an array of four unsigned bytes.  These bytes are:

<ul>
<li>0: Major version number</li>
<li>1: Minor version number</li>
<li>2: Milli version number</li>
<li>3: Patch version number</li>
</ul>

<p>UVersionNumber structures can be converted to and from string
representations as dotted integers, such as "1.4.5.0", using the
u_versionToString() and u_stringToVersion() functions.

<p>Version numbers monotonically increase as changes are made.  Two
UVersionInfo structure may be compared using binary comparison
(memcmp) to see which is larger (newer).  It only makes sense to
compare the same flavor of version number; you cannot compare the ICU
version number to the Collator version number, for instance.

<p>The interpretation of version numbers depends on what is being
described.

<h4>ICU Release Version Number</h4>

<p>0 (Major): Reference release with major feature addition or change.

<p>1 (Minor): Reference release without major feature addition.

<p>2 (Milli): Maintenance update to the reference releases.

<p>3 (Patch): Enhancement/patch update.


<h4>Code Component Version Numbers</h4>

<p>0 (Major): Breaking change.  Results and data generated by the new
version are incompatible with those generated by the preceding
version.  <em>Example</em>: In ICU 1.5, the implementation of ResourceBundle
changed drastically.  The data structure, algorithm for parsing data,
and so on are completely different in 1.5.  This required an increment
of the major version number.

<p>1 (Minor): Backward-compatible change.  The new version of the code
can read or use data generated by the old version, but the old version
cannot read or use data generated by the new version.  <em>Example</em>: The
delimiter in the CollationKey gets changed from 0x0000 to 0xFFFF.  The
algorithm keeps track of the differences and recognize these two
different formats before and after a particular release.

<p>2 (Milli): Compatible change.  Results and data generated by the new
version are compatible with those generated by the preceding version.
<em>Example</em>: A byte in the reserved bytes in the data structure is now
used as a flag/bitmask or whatever, e.g. UDataInfo.  The size of the
data structure is changed and new code is added to check for this
flag.  No other changes are made.

<p>3 (Patch): Enhancement.  A minor change.  <em>Example</em>: Performance
enhancements applied to the code but no changes other than that.


<h4>Data Component Version Numbers</h4>

<p>0 (Major): Incompatible format change.  The layout or format of the
data has changed.  For example, an additional array element has been
added, or an additional tag.  <em>Example</em>: ICU 1.6 changes the element
layout in "CollationElements".  We changed this from a tag with plain
string value to a tagged array with 3 new subtags, "Version",
"Override" and "Sequence".  This change is incompatible with pre-1.6
code and data.

<p>1 (Minor): Backward-compatible format change.  A change that can be
read and used by previous versions of ICU, but that adds data used by
newer versions.  <em>Example</em>: We added a new tag called "Author" to the
data file.  The only difference between the previous version of the
data files and the current version is this tag.

<p>2 (Milli): Compatible change.  A change to the data without
modification of the format.  <em>Example</em>: We updated the value of a tag
"LocaleID" from "041C" to "3801".  No other changes were made.

<p>3 (Patch): Enhancement.  A minor change.  <em>Example</em>: We changed the
comments in the data file, perhaps the copyright notices.


<h4>Resource Bundles and Elements</h4>

<p>The data stored in resource bundles is tagged with version numbers.
A resource bundle can contain a tagged string named "Version" that
declares the version number in dotted-integer format.  <em>Example</em>:

<pre>
  en {
    Version { "1.0.3.5" }
    ...
  }
</pre>

<p>A resource bundle may omit the "Version" element, in which case it
will inherit one along the usual chain.  <em>Example</em>: If the resource
bundle en_US contained no "Version" element, it would inherit
"1.0.3.5" from en.

<p>If inheritance passes all the way to the root resource bundle and it
contains no "Version" resource, then the default version number
1.0.0.0 is returned.

<p>Elements within a resource bundle may also contain version numbers,
for example:

<pre>
  be {
    CollationElements { 
	  Version { "1.0.0.0" }
      ...
    }
  }
</pre>

<p>Here the CollationElements data is version 1.0.0.0.  This version
may differ from the version of the enclosing bundle.

<p>If a resource element lacks a "Version" element, then it inherits the
"Version" element of its enclosing resource bundle.  (This is a special
case; in general, resource bundle elements do not inherit data from
enclosing structures.)  <em>Example</em>:

<pre>
  en {
    Version { "1.0.3.5" }
    ...
  }

  en_US {
    CollationElements { 
      ...(contains no "Version" element)
    }
  }
</pre>
  
<p>Here, the version of the CollationElements in en_US is 1.0.3.5.  It
inherits the en_US version, which is inherited from en.

<p><b>NOTE</b>: The API and code to fully support the mechanism described above
is not in place yet as of ICU 1.6.  See Future Enhancements below.


<h4>What Components are Versioned</h4>

<p>Currently, the following components are versioned.

<ul>
<li>The version of ICU as a whole is returned by u_getVersion().</li>

<li>The version of a ResourceBundle is returned by ures_getVersion() and
  ResourceBundle::getVersion().  This is a data version number for the
  bundle as a whole.</li>

<li>The version of the Unicode character data underlying ICU is returned
  by u_getUnicodeVersion() and Unicode::getUnicodeVersion().  This
  version reflects the numbering of the Unicode releases; see
  <a href="http://www.unicode.org">http://www.unicode.org</a>.</li>

<li>The version of the Collator is returned by Collator::getVersion().
  This is a code version number for the collation code and algorithm.</li>
</ul>

<h4>Future Enhancements</h4>

<ul>
<li>The ResourceBundle version number inheritance mechanism is not fully
  implemented and tested.</li>

<li>The resource element version number is not implemented at all.
  API for this does not yet exist.</li>

<li>Versioning of a RuleBasedCollator's data is only possible through
  the ResourceBundle API.  There should probably be API on
  RuleBasedCollator (or Collator) to obtain the data version number.</li>

<li>Versioning of the Normalizer data is not implemented.</li>

<li>Versioning of the Normalizer algorithm is not implemented.</li>

<li>Versioning of the Transliterators is not implemented.</li>

<li>Versioning of formatters, break iterators, and so on is not
  implemented.</li>
</ul>



<h3><a name=ProgrammingNotes></a><u>Programming Notes</u></h3>

<h4><u>Reporting Errors</u></h4>

<p>In order for the code to be portable, only a subset of the C++ language that
will compile correctly on even the oldest of C++ compilers (and also to provide
a usable C interface) can be used in the implementation, which means that
there's no use the C++ exception mechanism in the code. </p>

<p>After considering many alternatives, the decision was that every function
that can fail takes an error-code parameter by reference. This is always the
last parameter in the function&#8217;s parameter list. The ErrorCode type is defined
as a enumerated type. Zero represents no error, positive values represent
errors, and negative values represent non-error status codes. Macros were
provided, SUCCESS and FAILURE, to check the error code. </p>

<p>The ErrorCode parameter is an input-output parameter. Every function tests
the error code before doing anything else, and immediately exits if it&#8217;s a
FAILURE error code. If the function fails later on, it sets the error code
appropriately and exits without doing any other work (except, of course, any
cleanup it has to do). If the function encounters a non-error condition it
wants to signal (such as &quot;encountered an unmapped character&quot; in
transcoding), it sets the error code appropriately and continues. Otherwise,
the function leaves the error code unchanged. </p>

<p>Generally, only functions that don&#8217;t take an ErrorCode parameter, but call
functions that do, have to declare one. Almost all functions that take an
ErrorCode parameter and also call other functions that do merely have to
propagate the error code they were passed down to the functions they call.
Functions that declare a new ErrorCode parameter must initialize it to
ZERO_ERROR before calling any other functions. </p>

<p>The rationale here is to allow a function to call several functions (that
take error codes) in a row without having to check the error code after each
one. [A function usually will have to check the error code before doing any
other processing, however, since it is supposed to stop immediately after
receiving an error code.] Propagating the error-code parameter down the call
chain saves the programmer from having to declare one everywhere, and also
allows us to more closely mimic the C++ exception protocol. </p>

<h4><u>C Function and Data Type Naming</u></h4>

<p><b>Function names.</b> If a function is identical (or almost identical) to
an ANSI or POSIX function, we give it the same name and (as much as possible)
the same parameter list. A &quot;u&quot; is prepended onto the beginning of the
name. </p>

<p>For functions that exist prior to version 1.2.1, that the function name
should begin with a lower-case &quot;u&quot;. After the &quot;u&quot; is a
short code identifying the subsystem it belongs to (e.g., &quot;loc&quot;,
&quot;rb&quot;, &quot;cnv&quot;, &quot;coll&quot;, etc.). This code is
separated from the actual function name by an underscore, and the actual
function name can be anything. For example, </p>

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>UChar* uloc_getLanguage(...);<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>void uloc_setDefaultLocale(...);<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>UChar* ures_getString(...);</span></pre>

<p><b>Struct and enum type names.</b> For structs and enum types, the rule is
that their names begin with a capital &quot;U.&quot; There is no underscore for
struct names.</p>

<pre><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; UResourceBundle;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span
style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; UCollator;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre><span
style='font-size:7.5pt'><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>UCollationResult;</span></pre>

<p><b>Enum value names.</b> Enumeration values have names that begin with
&quot;UXXX&quot; where XXX stands for the name of the functional category.</p>

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>UNUM_DECIMAL;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>UCOL_GREATER;</span></pre>

<p><b>Macro names.</b> Macro names are in all caps, but there are currently no
other requirements. </p>

<p><b>Constant names.</b> Many constant names (constants defined with
&quot;const&quot;, not macros defined with &quot;#define&quot; that are used as
constants) begin with a lowercase k, but this isn&#8217;t universally enforced. </p>

<h4><u>Preflighting and Overflow Handling</u></h4>

<p>In ICU's C APIs, the user needs to adhere to the following principles for
consistency across all functional categories: </p>

<ol start=1 type=1>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l8 level1 lfo46;tab-stops:list .5in'>All the Unicode string
     processing should be expressed in terms of a UChar* buffer that is always
     null terminated.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l8 level1 lfo46;tab-stops:list .5in'>The APIs assume that the
     input string parameters are statically allocated fix-sized character
     buffers.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l8 level1 lfo46;tab-stops:list .5in'>When the value a function is
     going to return is already stored as a constant value in static space
     (e.g., it&#8217;s coming from a fixed table, or is stored in a cache), the
     function will just return the const UChar* pointer.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l8 level1 lfo46;tab-stops:list .5in'>When the function can&#8217;t
     return a UChar* to storage the user doesn&#8217;t have to delete, the caller
     needs to pass in a pointer to a character buffer that the function can
     fill with the result. This pointer needs to be accompanied by a int32_t
     parameter that gives the size of the buffer.</li>
</ol>

<p>To find out how large the result buffer should be, ICU provides a <strong>preflighting</strong>
C interface.&nbsp; The interface works like this: </p>

<ol start=1 type=1>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l9 level1 lfo49;tab-stops:list .5in'>When using the &quot;<b>preflighting</b>&quot;
     option: you need to pass the function a NULL pointer for the buffer
     pointer, and the function returns the actual size of the result. You can
     then choose to allocate a buffer of the correct size and re-run the
     operation if you would like to.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l9 level1 lfo49;tab-stops:list .5in'>After allocating a buffer of
     some reasonable size on the stack and passes that to the function, if the
     result can fit in that buffer, everything&nbsp; works fine. If the result
     doesn&#8217;t fit, the function will return the actual size needed.&nbsp; You
     can then allocate a buffer of the correct size on the heap and try calling
     the same function again.</li>
 <li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
     mso-list:l9 level1 lfo49;tab-stops:list .5in'>Now you have created a
     buffer of some reasonable size on the stack and passes it to the
     function.&nbsp; If you don't care about the completeness of the result and
     the allocated buffer is too small, you can continue on using the truncated
     result.</li>
</ol>

<p>The following three options demonstrates how to use the preflighting
interface, </p>

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>/**&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;* @param result is a pointer to where the actual result will be.<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;* @param maxResultSize is the number of characters the buffer pointed to be result has room for.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;* @return The actual length of the result (counting the terminating null)<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;*/<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>int32_t doSomething( /* input params */, UChar* result,<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; int32_t maxResultSize, UErrorCode* err);</span></pre>

<p>In this sample, if the actual result doesn&#8217;t fit in the space available in <span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>maxResultSize</span>, this
function returns the amount of space necessary to hold the result, and result
holds as many characters of the actual result as possible. If you don&#8217;t care
about this, no further action is necessary. If you <i>do </i>care about the
truncated characters, you can then allocate a buffer on the heap of the size
specified by the return value and call the function again, passing <i>that </i>buffer&#8217;s
address for result. </p>

<p>All preflighting functions have a fill-in <span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>ErrorCode</span> parameter (and follow the normal <span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>ErrorCode</span> rules),
even if they are not currently doing so. Buffer overflow would be treated as a
FAILURE error condition, but would <i>not</i> be reported when the caller
passes in NULL for <span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>actualResultSize</span>
(presumably, a NULL for this parameter means the client doesn&#8217;t care if he got
a buffer overflow). All other failing error conditions will overwrite the
&quot;buffer overflow&quot; error, e.g. <span style='font-family:"Courier New"'>MISSING_RESOURCE_ERROR</span>
etc..</p>

<h4><u>Arrays as return types</u></h4>

<p>Returning an array of strings is fairly easy in C++, but very hard in C.
Instead of returning the array pointer directly, we opted for an iterative
interface instead: split the function into two functions.&nbsp; One returns the
number of elements in the array, and the other one returns a single specified
element from the array.</p>

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>int32_t countArrayItems(/* params */);<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>int32_t getArrayElement(int32_t elementIndex, /* other params */,<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; UChar* result, int32_t maxResultSize, UErrorCode* err);</span></pre>

<p>In this case, iterating across all the elements in the array would amount to
a call to the count() function followed by multiple calls to the getElement()
function. </p>

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>for (i = 0; i &lt; countArrayItems(...); i++) {<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; UChar element[50];<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; getArrayItem(i, ..., element, 50, &amp;err);<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /* do something with element */<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>}</span></pre>

<p>In the case of the resource bundle <span style='font-family:"Courier New"'>ures_XXXX</span>
functions returning 2-dimensional arrays, the getElement() function takes both
x and y coordinates for the desired element, and the count() function returns
the number of arrays (x axis). &nbsp; Since the size of each array element in
the resource 2-D arrays should always be the same, this provides an easy-to-use
C interface. </p>

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>void countArrayItems(int32_t* rows, int32_t* columns,<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /* other params */);<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'><![if !supportEmptyParas]>&nbsp;<![endif]><o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>int32_t get2dArrayElement(int32_t rowIndex,&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; int32_t colIndex,<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /* other params */,&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; UChar* result,&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; int32_t maxResultSize,<o:p></o:p></span></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-size:7.5pt'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; UErrorCode* err);</span></pre>


<h3><a name="buffer_overflow"></a>Important change of error codes from streaming conversion functions</h3>

<p>We have decided to make a semantic change to the conversion API
which affects applications using ICU that are migrated to use ICU version 1.6 compared to earlier ICU versions:<br>

The error code that is set from streaming conversion like
<pre>
ucnv_fromUnicode() - ucnv_toUnicode()
ucnv_fromUChars()  - ucnv_toUChars()
scsu_compress()    - scsu_decompress()
</pre>
when the target buffer is full but the source not empty is changed from
<code>U_INDEX_OUTOFBOUNDS_ERROR</code> to <code>U_BUFFER_OVERFLOW_ERROR</code>.
This change makes the error codes more consistent with their names and
with their use in other icu APIs.</p>

<p>You need to test for this new error code if your code uses ICU for conversion
and used the old error code. ucnv.h and scsu.h are updated with this information.
Please search in your source code for <code>U_INDEX_OUTOFBOUNDS_ERROR</code>.
If it is used with the above functions (<em>not</em> with <code>ucnv_getNextUChar()</code>),
then you need to change it to <code>U_BUFFER_OVERFLOW_ERROR</code> in order to
get your code to work with icu 1.6.</p>

<p>See the updated sample code in <code>icu/source/samples</code>. All samples are updated.
See <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/bugs?findid=516">jitterbug 516</a> for details.
This was discussed in july 2000 on the icu mailing list.
Please see the list archive for the <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/archives/icu/icu.0007/msg00142.html">discussion</a>.</p>


<h3><a name=WhereToFindMore></a><u>Where to Find More Information</u></h3>

<p><a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/</a>
is a pointer to general information about the International Components for
Unicode. </p>

<p><a href="docs/udata.html">docs/udata.html</a> is a raw draft of ICU data
handling.</p>

<p><a href="../icuhtml/aindex.html">html/aindex.html</a> is an alphabetical
index to detailed API documentation. <br>
<a href="../icuhtml/HIERjava.html">html/HIERjava.html</a> is a hierarchical
index to detailed API documentation. </p>

<p><a href="docs/collate.html">docs/collate.html</a> is an overview to
Collation. </p>

<p><a href="docs/BreakIterator.html">docs/BreakIterator.html</a> is a diagram
showing how BreakIterator processes text elements. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.ibm.com/developer/unicode/">http://www.ibm.com/developer/unicode/</a> is a
pointer to information on how to make applications global. <br>
&nbsp; </p>

<h3><a name=SubmittingComments></a><u>Submitting Comments, Requesting Features
and Reporting Bugs</u></h3>

<p>To submit comments, request features and report bugs, please contact
us.&nbsp; While we are not able to respond individually to each comment, we do
review all comments. Send Internet email to <a
href="mailto:icu@oss.software.ibm.com">icu@oss.software.ibm.com</a>.</p>


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<p>Copyright <20> 1997-2000 International Business Machines Corporation and
others. All Rights Reserved.<br>
IBM Center for Java Technology Silicon Valley, <br>
10275 N De Anza Blvd., Cupertino, CA 95014 <br>
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