scuffed-code/icu4c
Vladimir Weinstein 76750ed1ab ICU-2558 test fix
X-SVN-Rev: 10624
2002-12-11 23:57:06 +00:00
..
as_is ICU-2457 Update the project files. 2002-12-11 21:12:00 +00:00
data ICU-1627 Remove transliterator source from resfiles.mk 2002-01-24 04:23:41 +00:00
debian ICU-678 fix the fix 2002-04-15 20:56:35 +00:00
packaging ICU-2306 update the spec, tested to work with icu 2.2 2002-09-27 23:37:59 +00:00
source ICU-2558 test fix 2002-12-11 23:57:06 +00:00
.cvsignore ICU-648 Don't ignore debian. 2000-12-14 01:08:41 +00:00
license.html ICU-2134 include in the 2002 year into copyright notice. 2002-08-23 23:21:38 +00:00
readme.html ICU-2134 Make the readme more friendly to search engines and blind people. 2002-12-08 08:19:31 +00:00

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    <h1>International Components for Unicode<br>
     <abbr title="International Components for Unicode">ICU</abbr> 2.4
    ReadMe</h1>

    <p>Version: 2002-Dec-09<br>
     Copyright &copy; 1997-2002 International Business Machines Corporation and
    others. All Rights Reserved.</p>
    <!-- Remember that there is a copyright at the end too -->
    <hr>

    <h2 class="TOC">Table of Contents</h2>

    <ul class="TOC">
      <li><a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></li>

      <li><a href="#GettingStarted">Getting Started</a></li>

      <li><a href="#News">What Is New In This release?</a></li>

      <li><a href="#Download">How To Download the Source Code</a></li>

      <li><a href="#SourceCode">ICU Source Code Organization</a></li>

      <li>
        <a href="#HowToBuild">How To Build And Install ICU</a> 

        <ul class="TOC">
          <li><a href="#HowToBuildSupported">Supported Platforms</a></li>

          <li><a href="#HowToBuildWindows">Windows</a></li>

          <li><a href="#HowToBuildWindowsXP64">Windows XP on IA64</a></li>

          <li><a href="#HowToBuildUnix">Unix</a></li>

          <li><a href="#HowToBuildZOS">z/OS (os/390)</a></li>

          <li><a href="#HowToBuildOS400">OS/400 (iSeries)</a></li>
        </ul>
      </li>

      <li>
        <a href="#ImportantNotes">Important Notes About Using ICU</a> 

        <ul class="TOC">
          <li><a href="#ImportantNotesCPlusPlus">Using ICU in a Multithreaded
          Environment</a></li>

          <li><a href="#MakeICUSmaller">How to Make ICU Smaller</a></li>

          <li><a href="#ImportantNotesBinaryCompat">Binary
          Compatibility</a></li>

          <li><a href="#ImportantNotesWindows">Windows Platform</a></li>

          <li><a href="#ImportantNotesUnix">Unix Type Platforms</a></li>

          <li><a href="#ImportantNotesDefaultCP">Using the Default
          Codepage</a></li>
        </ul>
      </li>

      <li><a href="#PlatformDependencies">Platform Dependencies</a></li>
    </ul>
    <hr>

    <h2><a name="Introduction" href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></h2>

    <p>Today's software market is a global one in which it is desirable to
    develop and maintain one application (single source/single binary) that
    supports a wide variety of languages. The International Components for
    Unicode (C/C++) provides tools to help write platform-independent
    applications that are internationalized and localized, with support
    for:</p>

    <ul>
      <li>Support for the latest version of the Unicode standard</li>

      <li>Character set conversions, with support for over 200 codepages</li>

      <li>Locale data for more than 220 locales</li>

      <li>Text collation (sorting) based on the Unicode Collation Algorithm
      (=ISO 14651), customizable and tailored for national standards</li>

      <li>Transliteration services for script&lt;-&gt;script transliterations
      and general text operations</li>

      <li>Resource bundles for storing and accessing localized information</li>

      <li>Date/Number/Message formatting and parsing of culture-specific
      input/output formats</li>

      <li>Text boundary analysis for finding characters, word and sentence
      boundaries</li>
    </ul>

    <p>ICU has a sister project <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/">ICU4J</a> that extends the
    internationalization capabilities of Java to a level similar to ICU. The
    ICU C/C++ project is also called ICU4C when a distinction is necessary.</p>

    <h2><a name="GettingStarted" href="#GettingStarted">Getting
    started</a></h2>

    <p>This document describes how to build and install ICU on your machine.
    For other information about ICU please see the following table of
    links.<br>
     The ICU homepage also links to related information about writing
    internationalized software.</p>

    <table border="1" cellpadding="3" width="100%" summary="">
      <caption>
        Here are some useful links regarding ICU and internationalization in
        general.
      </caption>

      <tr>
        <td>ICU Homepage</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>ICU4J Homepage</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about ICU</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/icufaq.html">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/icufaq.html</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>ICU User's Guide</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Download ICU Releases</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>API Documentation Online</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/apiref/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/apiref/</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Online ICU Demos</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/demo/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/demo/</a></td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Contacts and Bug Reports/Feature Requests</td>

        <td><a href=
        "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/archives/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/archives/</a></td>
      </tr>
    </table>

    <p><strong>Important:</strong> Please make sure you understand the <a href=
    "license.html">Copyright and License Information</a>.</p>

    <h2><a name="News" href="#News">What is new in this release?</a></h2>

    <p>The following list concentrates on <em>changes that affect existing
    applications migrating from previous ICU releases</em>. For more news about
    this release, see the <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/2.4/">ICU 2.4 download
    page</a>.</p>

    <h3>UnicodeString assignments</h3>

    <p>ICU 2.4 changes the behavior of the <code>UnicodeString</code>
    assignment operator and copy constructor for where the source string is a
    readonly alias. For such strings, the copy used to also be a readonly alias
    to the same buffer, but that was seen as too dangerous (see <a href=
    "http://www.jtcsv.com/cgibin/icu-bugs?findid=2296">Jitterbug 2296</a>). The
    new <code>fastCopyFrom()</code> member function provides the old assignment
    behavior. It can be used explicitly when it is known to be safe to maintain
    readonly aliases instead of cloning the buffer. For more information about
    string aliasing and other <code>UnicodeString</code> storage models see the
    <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/strings.html">User Guide
    Strings chapter</a>.</p>

    <h3>Unicode-handling macros (utf*.h)</h3>

    <p>The macros in <code>source/common/unicode/utf*.h</code> have been
    revamped, improved, simplified, and renamed. The old macros continue to be
    available. They are in <code>utf_old.h</code>, together with an explanation
    of the change. <code>utf.h</code>, <code>utf8.h</code> and
    <code>utf16.h</code> contain the new macros instead. The new macros are
    intended to be more consistent, more useful, and less confusing. Some
    macros were simply renamed for consistency with a new naming scheme.</p>

    <p>A related change is that <code>UChar32</code> is not a
    platform-dependent type any more, but is now always defined to be the same
    as <code>int32_t</code>. This allows for consistent, more portable code and
    C++ function overloading as well as negative values as sentinels on all
    platforms. See the definition in <code>utf.h</code>.</p>

    <h3>ICU code library size</h3>

    <p>ICU code libraries can be made smaller by removing functionality. See <a
    href="#MakeICUSmaller">How to Make ICU Smaller</a>.</p>

    <h3>Support for Unicode 3.2</h3>

    <p>Unicode properties and algorithms have been upgraded to <a href=
    "http://www.unicode.org/unicode/standard/versions/enumeratedversions.html#Unicode_3_2_0">
    Unicode 3.2</a>, which includes the addition of more than 1000 new encoded
    characters. The UCA (<a href="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/">Unicode
    Collation Algorithm</a>) table is updated to the current version 3.1.1,
    with Unicode 3.2-based canonical closure. All Unicode properties (except
    for those in Unihan.txt) are now <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/icuhtml/design/ucd_icu.html">
    available via direct APIs, and most via UnicodeSet</a>.</p>

    <h3>Additional and modified converters</h3>

    <p>New converter implementations are added for:</p>

    <ul>
      <li>UTF-16 and UTF-32 (detect/emit BOM according to IANA
      registration)<br>
       These and related names used to be aliases for UTF16_PlatformEndian and
      UTF32_PlatformEndian but are now separate, IANA-registration-compliant
      converters that detect and emit the respective Byte Order Mark. The
      "platform endian" converters (without automatic BOM handling) are now
      only available via their specific names.</li>

      <li><a href="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr26/">CESU-8</a> (while the
      <a href="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr28/#3_1_conformance">UTF-8 code
      is tightened according to Unicode 3.2</a>)</li>

      <li><a href=
      "http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/icuhtml/design/conversion/bocu1/bocu1.html">
      BOCU-1</a> (MIME-compatible compression of Unicode text that preserves
      binary order)</li>
    </ul>

    <h3>Flexible data loading</h3>

    <p>ICU 2.2 has an extended search path functionality, more flexible data
    override capabilities, and removes lesser-known heuristics for determining
    the data path.</p>

    <ul>
      <li>Performance: ICU will only load data from packages, not from single
      files, when the search path is empty. This eliminates all file system
      accesses after the packages (ICU data + application data) are loaded.<br>
       If this is important, then an application should set the search path to
      the empty path during initialization.</li>

      <li>Customizability: If the search path is not empty, then ICU searches
      for single files before looking in packages, allowing to override/update
      packaged data.</li>

      <li>User data: The new function ucnv_openPackage allows an application to
      load an ICU character mapping table from its own data. This enables
      applications to support more codepages than the ICU installation that it
      uses.</li>

      <li>Separation between ICU data and user data: Single data files must now
      always have a package name as prefix, which results in different file
      names between ICU and all application packages even for the same locale
      IDs etc.</li>

      <li>Multi-path: The search path can now contain multiple folders and can
      list packages directly instead of just a single folder.</li>

      <li>Predictability: The search path can be set via the ICU_DATA
      environment variable or via the u_setDataDirectory() function.<br>
       ICU does not perform any other heuristics any more.</li>
    </ul>

    <p><strong>Note:</strong> while some of the old binary data may be still
    readable by ICU 2.2 (resource bundles, for example), they need to be
    repackaged in order to be used.</p>

    <ul>
      <li>If you have individual binary files, you have to rename them so that
      you prepend a <code>'packagename_'</code>. Then use
      <code>packagename</code> for opening.</li>

      <li>If you have a memory-mapped package file, you will need to unpack it
      (use decmn tool), rename individual files as above (prepending the
      package name), and repack the files.</li>

      <li>If you have a shared library file, you'll need to somehow get
      individual files and repackage them.</li>
    </ul>

    <h3>Customizable memory management</h3>

    <p>ICU 2.2 libraries do not use the global operators new and delete.
    Instead, all C++ classes are derived from a common base class UObject which
    implements new and delete operators for all of ICU's C++ classes. Users can
    customize the ICU memory allocation by changing the functions in
    source/common/cmemory.c that are used for non-class types and in UObject's
    new and delete operators.</p>

    <p>This also means that ICU libraries may safely use a different heap than
    the application because all memory is consistently allocated and released
    from within the libraries. On Windows it is now possible to link the
    application with, for example, the static C runtime library even though ICU
    libraries use the DLL-based runtime.</p>

    <h3>Experimental locales moved to new repository</h3>

    <p>Experimental locales are ones for which we have incomplete data. Data
    for such locales used to be included in the default ICU download, but have
    been moved to a new <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/locale/icu/experimental/">locale data
    repository</a>, stored as another <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/develop/cvs.html">ICU CVS module</a>. This
    data can be added back into a customized ICU build, see the <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/icudata.html">User Guide Data
    chapter</a>. It can also still be viewed with the <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/demo/">LocaleExplorer demo</a>.</p>
    <hr>

    <h2><a name="Download" href="#Download">How To Download the Source
    Code</a></h2>

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

    <ul>
      <li><strong>Official Release Snapshot:</strong><br>
       If you want to use ICU (as opposed to developing it), you should
      download an official packaged version of the ICU source code. 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. These packaged files can be found at <a href=
      "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/">http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/</a>.<br>

       The packaged snapshots are named <strong>icu-nnnn.zip</strong> or
      <strong>icu-nnnn.tgz</strong>, where nnnn is the version number. The .zip
      file is used for Windows platforms, while the .tgz file is preferred on
      most other platforms.<br>
       Please unzip this file. It will reconstruct the source directory, which
      includes anonymous CVS control directories (see below).</li>

      <li><strong>CVS Source Repository:</strong><br>
       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. See our
      <a href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/develop/cvs.html">CVS page</a>
      for details.</li>
    </ul>

    <h2><a name="SourceCode" href="#SourceCode">ICU Source Code
    Organization</a></h2>

    <p>In the descriptions below, <strong><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i></strong> is the
    full path name of the icu directory (the top level directory from the
    distribution archives) in your file system. You can also view the <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/design.html">User's Guide</a> to
    see which libraries you need for your software product. You need at least
    the data (<code>[lib]icudt</code>) and the common (<code>[lib]icuuc</code>)
    libraries in order to use ICU.</p>

    <table border="1" cellpadding="0" width="100%" summary="">
      <caption>
        The following files describe the code drop.
      </caption>

      <tr>
        <th scope="col">File</th>

        <th scope="col">Description</th>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>readme.html</td>

        <td>Describes the International Components for Unicode (this file)</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>license.html</td>

        <td>Contains the text of the ICU license</td>
      </tr>
    </table>

    <p><br>
    </p>

    <table border="1" cellpadding="0" width="100%" summary="">
      <caption>
        The following directories contain source code and data files.
      </caption>

      <tr>
        <th scope="col">Directory</th>

        <th scope="col">Description</th>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>common</b>/</td>

        <td>The core Unicode and support functionality, such as resource
        bundles, character properties, locales, codepage conversion,
        normalization, Unicode properties, Locale, and UnicodeString.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>i18n</b>/</td>

        <td>Modules in i18n are generally the more data-driven, that is to say
        resource bundle driven, components. These deal with higher-level
        internationalization issues such as formatting, collation, text break
        analysis, and transliteration.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>data</b>/</td>

        <td>
          This directory contains the source data in text format, which is
          compiled into binary form during the ICU build process. It contains
          several subdirectories, in which the data files are grouped by
          function. Note that the build process must be run again after any
          changes are made to this directory. 

          <ul>
            <li><b>brkitr/</b> Data files for character, word, sentence, title
            casing and line boundary analysis.</li>

            <li><b>locales/</b> These .txt files contain ICU language and
            culture-specific localization data. Two special bundles are
            <b>root</b>, which is the fallback data and parent of other
            bundles, and <b>index</b>, which contains a list of installed
            bundles. The makefile <b>resfiles.mk</b> contains the list of
            resource bundle files.</li>

            <li><b>mappings/</b> Here are the code page converter tables. These
            .ucm files contain mappings to and from Unicode. These are compiled
            into .cnv files. <b>convrtrs.txt</b> is the alias mapping table
            from various converter name formats to ICU internal format and vice
            versa. It produces cnvalias.icu. The makefiles <b>ucmfiles.mk,
            ucmcore.mk,</b> and <b>ucmebcdic.mk</b> contain the list of
            converters to be built.</li>

            <li><b>translit/</b> This directory contains transliterator rules
            as resource bundles, a makefile <b>trnsfiles.mk</b> containing the
            list of installed system translitaration files, and as well the
            special bundle <b>translit_index</b> which lists the system
            transliterator aliases.</li>

            <li><b>unidata/</b> This directory contains the Unicode data files.
            Please see <a href=
            "http://www.unicode.org/">http://www.unicode.org/</a> for more
            information.</li>

            <li><b>misc/</b> The misc directory contains other data files which
            did not fit into the above categories. Currently it only contains
            <b>timezone.txt,</b> a generated file, which is compiled into
            tz.dat. The <b>tz.dat</b> file contains time zone information.</li>

            <li><b>out/</b> This directory contains the assembled memory mapped
            files.</li>

            <li><b>out/build/</b> This directory contains intermediate
            (compiled) files, such as .cnv, .res, etc.</li>
          </ul>
        </td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/test/<b>intltest</b>/</td>

        <td>A test suite including all C++ APIs. For information about running
        the test suite, see the users' guide.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/test/<b>cintltst</b>/</td>

        <td>A test suite written in C, including all C APIs. For information
        about running the test suite, see the users' guide.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/test/<b>testdata</b>/</td>

        <td>Source text files for data, which are read by the tests. It
        contains the subdirectories <b>out/build/</b> which is used for
        intermediate files, and <b>out/</b> which contains the files
        <b>test1.cnv</b> through <b>test4.cnv,</b> and <b>testdata.dat.</b>
        Note that the tests call
        u_setDataDirectory("&lt;ICU&gt;/source/test/testdata/lib"), so that ICU
        will load these files as if they were part of the ICU data package, for
        testing purposes. This was formerly accomplished by setting the
        ICU_DATA environment variable to point at these files. ICU_DATA should
        not be set under normal circumstances.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>tools</b>/</td>

        <td>Tools for generating the data files. Data files are generated by
        invoking <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/data/build/makedata.bat on Win32 or
        <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/make on Unix.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>samples</b>/</td>

        <td>Various sample programs that use ICU</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>extra</b>/</td>

        <td>Non-supported API additions. Currently, it contains the 'ustdio'
        file i/o library</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>layout</b>/</td>

        <td>Contains the ICU layout engine (not a rasterizer).</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/<b>packaging</b>/<br>
         <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/<b>debian</b>/</td>

        <td>These directories contain scripts and tools for packaging the final
        ICU build for various release platforms.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>config</b>/</td>

        <td>Contains helper makefiles for platform specific build commands.
        Used by 'configure'.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/source/<b>allinone</b>/</td>

        <td>Contains top-level ICU workspace and project files, for instance to
        build all of ICU under one MSVC project.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/<b>bin</b>/</td>

        <td>Contains the libraries and executables for using ICU on
        Windows.</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td><i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>/<b>include</b>/</td>

        <td>Contains the headers needed for developing software that uses ICU
        on Windows.</td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <!-- end of ICU structure ==================================== -->

    <h2><a name="HowToBuild" href="#HowToBuild">How To Build And Install
    ICU</a></h2>

    <h3><a name="HowToBuildSupported" href="#HowToBuildSupported">Supported
    Platforms</a></h3>

    <table border="1" cellpadding="3" summary="">
      <caption>
        Here is a status of functionality of ICU on several different
        platforms.
      </caption>

      <tr>
        <th scope="col">Operating system</th>

        <th scope="col">Compiler</th>

        <th scope="col">Testing frequency</th>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Windows NT/2000/XP</td>

        <td>Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0</td>

        <td>Reference platform</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Red Hat Linux 7.2</td>

        <td>gcc 2.96</td>

        <td>Reference platform</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>AIX 5.1.0 L</td>

        <td>Visual Age C++ 5.0</td>

        <td>Reference platform</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7)</td>

        <td>Workshop Pro CC 6.0</td>

        <td>Reference platform</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>HP/UX 11.01</td>

        <td>aCC A.12.10</td>

        <td>Reference platform</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Windows 98</td>

        <td>Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>AIX 4.3.3</td>

        <td>xlC_r 3.6.6</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Solaris 8 (SunOS 5.8)</td>

        <td>Workshop Pro CC 4.2<br>
         (use 'runConfigureICU SOLARISCC/W4.2')</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6)</td>

        <td>gcc 2.95.2</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>FreeBSD 4.4</td>

        <td>gcc 2.95.3</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Mac OS X (10.1)</td>

        <td>gcc-932.1, based on gcc version 2.95.2<br>
         (Developer Tools December 2001)</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>z/OS 1.2</td>

        <td>cxx 1.2</td>

        <td>Regularly tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>HP/UX 11.01</td>

        <td>CC A.03.10</td>

        <td>Rarely tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>AS/400 (iSeries) V5R1</td>

        <td>iCC</td>

        <td>Rarely tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>NetBSD, OpenBSD</td>

        <td>&nbsp;</td>

        <td>Rarely tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>SGI/IRIX</td>

        <td>&nbsp;</td>

        <td>Rarely tested</td>
      </tr>

      <tr>
        <td>Tru64 (OSF)</td>

        <td>Compaq's cxx compiler</td>

        <td>Rarely tested</td>
      </tr>
    </table>

    <p><br>
    </p>

    <p><strong>Key to testing frequency</strong></p>

    <dl>
      <dt><i>Reference platform</i></dt>

      <dd>ICU will work on these platforms with these compilers</dd>

      <dt><i>Regularly tested</i></dt>

      <dd>ICU should work on these platforms with these compilers</dd>

      <dt><i>Rarely tested</i></dt>

      <dd>ICU has been ported to these platforms but may not have been tested
      there recently</dd>
    </dl>

    <h3><a name="HowToBuildWindows" href="#HowToBuildWindows">How To Build And
    Install On Windows</a></h3>

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

    <ul>
      <li>Microsoft NT 4.0 and above, or Windows 98 and above</li>

      <li>Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (Service Pack 2 is required to work with the
      release build of max speed optimization).</li>
    </ul>

    <p>(If you want to build with Microsoft Visual C++ .NET, please refer to
    the <a href="#HowToBuildWindowsDotNet">note about building with Visual
    Studio .NET</a> below.)</p>

    <p>The steps are:</p>

    <ol>
      <li>Unzip the icu-XXXX.zip file into any convenient location. Using
      command line zip, type "unzip -a icu-XXXX.zip -d drive:\directory", or
      just use WinZip.</li>

      <li>Be sure that the ICU binary directory, <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin\, is
      included in the <strong>PATH</strong> environment variable. The tests
      will not work without the location of the ICU dll files in the path.</li>

      <li>Set the <strong>TZ</strong> environment variable to
      <strong>PST8PDT</strong>. The tests will not work in any other time
      zone.</li>

      <li>Open the "<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\source\allinone\allinone.dsw" workspace
      file in Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0. (This workspace includes all the
      International Components for Unicode libraries, necessary ICU building
      tools, and the intltest and cintltest test suite projects). Please see
      the note below if you want to build from the command line instead.</li>

      <li>Set the active Project to the "all" project. To do this: Choose
      "Project" menu, and select "Set active project". In the submenu, select
      the "all" workspace.</li>

      <li>Set the active configuration to "Win32 Debug" or "Win32 Release" (See
      <a href="#HowToBuildWindowsConfig">note</a> below).</li>

      <li>Choose the "Build" menu and select "Rebuild All". If you want to
      build the Debug and Release at the same time, see the <a href=
      "#HowToBuildWindowsBatch">note</a> below.</li>

      <li>Run the C++ test suite, "intltest". To do this: set the active
      project to "intltest", and press F5 to run it.</li>

      <li>Run the C test suite, "cintltst". To do this: set the active project
      to "cintltst", and press F5 to run it.</li>

      <li>Make sure that both "cintltst" and "intltest" passed without any
      errors. The return codes are non-zero when they do not pass. Visual C++
      will display the return codes in the debug tag of the output window. When
      "intltest" and "cintltest" return 0, it means that everything is
      installed correctly. You can press Ctrl+F5 on the test project to run the
      test and see what error messages were displayed (if any tests
      failed).</li>

      <li>Reset the <strong>TZ</strong> environment variable to its original
      value, unless you plan on testing ICU any further.</li>

      <li>You are now able to develop applications with ICU by using the
      libraries and tools in <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin\. The headers are in
      <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\include\ and the link libraries are in
      <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\lib\. To install the ICU runtime on a machine, or ship
      it with your application, copy the needed components from
      <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin\ to a location on the system PATH or to your
      application directory.</li>
    </ol>

    <p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsCommandLine"><strong>Using MSDEV At The
    Command Line Note:</strong></a> You can build ICU from the command line.
    Assuming that you have properly installed Microsoft Visual C++ to support
    command line execution, you can run the following command, 'msdev
    <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\source\allinone\allinone.dsw /MAKE "ALL"'.</p>

    <p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsConfig"><strong>Setting Active Configuration
    Note:</strong></a> To set the active configuration, two different
    possibilities are:</p>

    <ul>
      <li>Choose "Build" menu, select "Set Active Configuration", and select
      "Win32 Release" or "Win32 Debug".</li>

      <li>Another way is to select "Customize" in the "Tools" menu, select the
      "Toolbars" tab, enable "Build" instead of "Build Minibar", and click on
      "Close". 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. Or, you can drag the project and
      configuration selections and drop them on the menu bar for later
      selection.</li>
    </ul>

    <p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsBatch"><strong>Batch Configuration
    Note:</strong></a> If you want to build the Debug and Release
    configurations at the same time, choose "Build" menu and select "Batch
    Build..." instead (and mark all configurations as checked), then click the
    button named "Rebuild All". The "all" workspace will build all the
    libraries, test programs and various ICU tools (e.g. genrb for generating
    binary locale data files).</p>

    <p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsDotNet"><strong>Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
    Note:</strong></a> ICU will build with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, though
    this is not a supported platform at the time of this writing. Visual Studio
    .NET will offer to convert the project files when you open the existing
    workspace file. Choose "Yes to All" in the dialog asking whether to convert
    the files or not (this creates new files) and then follow the rest of the
    build instructions.</p>

    <h3><a name="HowToBuildWindowsXP64" href="#HowToBuildWindowsXP64">How To
    Build And Install On Windows XP on IA64</a></h3>

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

    <ul>
      <li>Microsoft XP on an IA64 (Itanium&reg;) machine</li>

      <li>Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 (Service Pack 2 is required to work with the
      release build of max speed optimization).</li>

      <li>Microsoft Platform SDK.</li>
    </ul>

    <p>The steps are:</p>

    <ol>
      <li>Follow steps 1-3 in the <a href="#HowToBuildWindows">in the previous
      section</a>.</li>

      <li>Open the "Set Windows XP 64-bit Build Environment (Retail)" command
      window from the Microsoft Platform SDK.</li>

      <li>Use cd to get into the <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i> directory.</li>

      <li>Run this command: 'msdev /USEENV
      <i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\source\allinone\allinone.dsw /MAKE "all - Win64
      Release"'</li>

      <li>Run "cd source\test\intltest\Release"</li>

      <li>Run the C++ test suite, "intltest". There should be no errors.</li>

      <li>Run "cd ..\..\cintltst\Release"</li>

      <li>Run the C test suite, "cintltst". There should be no errors.</li>

      <li>Follow the last two steps in the <a href="#HowToBuildWindows">in the
      previous section</a>.</li>
    </ol>

    <h3><a name="HowToBuildUnix" href="#HowToBuildUnix">How To Build And
    Install On Unix</a></h3>

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

    <ul>
      <li>A C++ compiler installed on the target machine (for example: gcc, CC,
      xlC_r, aCC, cxx, etc...).</li>

      <li>An ANSI C compiler installed on the target machine (for example:
      cc).</li>

      <li>A recent version of GNU make (3.77+).</li>

      <li>For a list of z/OS tools please view the <a href=
      "#HowToBuildZOS">z/OS build section</a> of this document for further
      details.</li>
    </ul>

    <p>Here are the steps to build ICU:</p>

    <ol>
      <li>Decompress the icuXXXX.tar (or icuXXXX.tgz) file. For example,
      <tt>gunzip -d &lt; icuXXXX.tgz | tar xvf -</tt></li>

      <li>Change directory to the "icu/source".</li>

      <li>Run "chmod +x runConfigureICU configure install-sh" because these
      files may have the wrong permissions.</li>

      <li>Run the <a href="source/runConfigureICU">runConfigureICU</a> script
      for your platform. (See <a href="#HowToConfigureICU">note</a>
      below).</li>

      <li>Type "gmake" (or "make" if GNU make is the default make on your
      platform) to compile the libraries and all the data files. The proper
      name of the GNU make command is printed at the end of the configuration
      run, as in "You must use gmake to compile ICU".</li>

      <li>Optionally, type "gmake check" (or "make check") to run the test
      suite, which checks for ICU's functionality integrity (See <a href=
      "#HowToTestWithoutGmake">note</a> below).</li>

      <li>Type "gmake install" (or "make install") to install. The install
      targets support the use of the DESTDIR variable to create the
      installation tree under a specific destination directory. (See <a href=
      "#HowToInstallICU">note</a> below).</li>
    </ol>

    <p><a name="HowToConfigureICU"><strong>Configuring ICU NOTE:</strong></a>
    Type "./runConfigureICU --help" for help on how to run it and a list of
    supported platforms. You may also want to type "./configure --help" to
    print the available configure options that you may want to give
    runConfigureICU. If you are not using the runConfigureICU script, or your
    platform is not supported by the script, you may need to set your CC,CXX,
    CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables, and type "./configure". Some of
    the more frequently used options to configure are --disable-64bit-libs to
    create 32-bit libraries, and --srcdir to do out of source builds (build the
    libraries in the current location).</p>

    <p><a name="HowToTestWithoutGmake"><strong>Running The Tests From The
    Command Line NOTE:</strong></a> You may have to set certain variables if
    you with to run test programs individually, that is apart from "make
    check". The <strong>TZ</strong> environment variable needs to be set to
    <strong>PST8PDT</strong>. Also, the environment variable
    <strong>ICU_DATA</strong> can be set to the full pathname of the data
    directory to indicate where the locale data files and conversion mapping
    tables are when you are not using the shared library (e.g. by using the
    .dat archive or the individual data files). The trailing "/" is required
    after the directory name (e.g. "$Root/source/data/" will work, but the
    value "$Root/source/data" is not acceptable). You do not need to set
    <strong>ICU_DATA</strong> if the complete data library is in your library
    path.</p>

    <p><a name="HowToInstallICU"><strong>Installing ICU NOTE:</strong></a> If
    you are using the "gmake install" command, using the "--prefix" option on
    configure or runConfigureICU will install ICU to the specified
    location.</p>

    <p>Some platforms use package management tools to control the installation
    and uninstallation of files on the system, as well as the integrity of the
    system configuration. You may want to check if ICU can be packaged for your
    package management tools by looking into the "packaging" directory. (Please
    note that if you are using a snapshot of ICU from CVS, it is probable that
    the packaging scripts or related files are not up to date with the contents
    of ICU at this time, so use them with caution).</p>

    <h3><a name="HowToBuildZOS" href="#HowToBuildZOS">How To Build And Install
    On z/OS (OS/390)</a></h3>

    <p>You can install ICU on z/OS or OS/390 (the previous name of z/OS), but
    IBM tests only the z/OS installation. These platforms commonly are called
    "MVS". You install ICU in a z/OS UNIX system services file system such as
    HFS or zFS. On this platform, it is important that you understand a few
    details:</p>

    <ul>
      <li>APAR PQ58392 may be needed by z/OS 1.2 or 1.3 in order to get some
      ICU number formatting functions to work properly. The APAR affects C and
      C++ code.</li>

      <li>The gnu utilities gmake and gzip/gunzip are needed and can be
      obtained for z/OS from <a href=
      "http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/unix/bpxa1ty1.html#opensrc">
      z/OS Unix - Tools and Toys</a>. Documentation on these tools can be found
      at the <a href=
      "http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg245944.html">
      Open Source Software for z/OS UNIX</a> Red Book.</li>

      <li>Encoding considerations: The source code assumes that it is compiled
      with codepage ibm-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 ibm-1047 (USS) EBCDIC. However, some files are binary files and
      must not be converted, or must be converted back to their original state.
      You can use the <a href="as_is/os390/unpax-icu.sh">unpax-icu.sh</a>
      script to do this for you automatically. It will unpackage the tar file
      and convert all the necessary files for you automatically.</li>

      <li>
        <p>z/OS supports both native S/390 hexadecimal floating point and,
        (with OS/390 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 z/OS 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 ./runConfigureICU --enable-debug
        zOS/cxx</code><br>
         Release build: <code>IEEE390=1 ./runConfigureICU zOS/cxx</code></p>
      </li>

      <li>Since the default make on z/OS is not gmake, the pkgdata tool
      requires that the "make" command is aliased to your installed version of
      gmake. You may also need to set $MAKE equal to the fully-qualified path
      of GNU make. GNU make is available with the "z/OS Unix - Tools and Toys"
      that was mentioned above. The required version is the same Unix build
      instructions.</li>

      <li>The makedep executable that is used with the z/OS ICU build process
      is not shipped with ICU. It is available at the <a href=
      "http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/unix/bpxa1ty1.html#opensrc">
      z/OS 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>The rest of the instructions for building and testing ICU on z/OS
      with Unix System Services are the same as the <a href=
      "#HowToBuildUnix">How To Build And Install On Unix</a> section.</li>
    </ul>

    <h4>z/OS (Batch/PDS) support outside the UNIX system services
    environment</h4>

    <p>By default, ICU builds its libraries into the UNIX file system (HFS). In
    addition, there is a z/OS specific environment variable (OS390BATCH) to
    build some libraries into the z/OS native file system. This is useful, for
    example, when your application is externalized via Job Control Language
    (JCL).</p>

    <p>The OS390BATCH environment variable enables non-UNIX support including
    the batch environment. When OS390BATCH is set, the libicuuc<i>XX</i>.dll,
    libicudt<i>XX</i>e.dll, and libicudt<i>XX</i>e_stub.dll binaries are built
    into data sets (the native file system). Turning on OS390BATCH does not
    turn off the normal z/OS UNIX build. This means that the The z/OS UNIX
    (HFS) dlls will always be created.</p>

    <p>Two additional environment variables indicate the names of the z/OS data
    sets to use. The LOADMOD environment variable identifies the name of the
    data set that contains the dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and the LOADEXP
    environment variable identifies the name of the data set that contains the
    side decks, which are normally the files with the .x suffix in the UNIX
    file system.</p>

    <p>A data set is roughly equivalent to a UNIX or Windows file. For most
    kinds of data sets the operating system maintains record boundaries. UNIX
    and Windows files are byte streams. Two kinds of data sets are PDS and
    PDSE. Each data set of these two types contains a directory. It is like a
    UNIX directory. Each "file" is called a "member". Each member name is
    limited to eight bytes, normally EBCDIC.</p>

    <p>Here is an example of some environment variables that you can set prior
    to building ICU:</p>
<pre>
<samp>OS390BATCH=1
LOADMOD=<i>USER</i>.ICU.LOAD
LOADEXP=<i>USER</i>.ICU.EXP</samp>
</pre>

    <p>The PDS member names for the DLL file names are as follows:</p>
<pre>
<samp>IXMI<i>XX</i>UC --&gt; libicuuc<i>XX</i>.dll
IXMI<i>XX</i>DA --&gt; libicudt<i>XX</i>e.dll
IXMI<i>XX</i>D1 --&gt; libicudt<i>XX</i>e_stub.dll <i>(Only when OS390_STUBDATA=1)</i></samp>
</pre>

    <p>You should point the LOADMOD environment variable at a partitioned data
    set extended (PDSE) and point the LOADEXP environment variable at a
    partitioned data set (PDS). The PDSE can be allocated with the following
    attributes:</p>
<pre>
<samp>Data Set Name . . . : <i>USER</i>.ICU.LOAD
Management class. . : <i>**None**</i>
Storage class . . . : <i>BASE</i>
Volume serial . . . : <i>TSO007</i>
Device type . . . . : <i>3390</i>
Data class. . . . . : LOAD
Organization  . . . : PO
Record format . . . : U
Record length . . . : 0
Block size  . . . . : 32760
1st extent cylinders: 1
Secondary cylinders : 5
Data set name type  : LIBRARY</samp>
</pre>

    <p>The PDS can be allocated with the following attributes:</p>
<pre>
<samp>Data Set Name . . . : <i>USER</i>.ICU.EXP
Management class. . : <i>**None**</i>
Storage class . . . : <i>BASE</i>
Volume serial . . . : <i>TSO007</i>
Device type . . . . : <i>3390</i>
Data class. . . . . : <i>**None**</i>
Organization  . . . : PO
Record format . . . : FB
Record length . . . : 80
Block size  . . . . : <i>3200</i>
1st extent cylinders: 3
Secondary cylinders : 3
Data set name type  : PDS</samp>
</pre>

    <h3><a name="HowToBuildOS400" href="#HowToBuildOS400">How To Build And
    Install On OS/400 (iSeries)</a></h3>

    <p>ICU Reference Release 2.4 contains partial support for the iSeries
    platform. After building ICU and running the tests, you may notice that
    some of the formatting tests fail. The formating failures can be ignored
    for now. These failures are expected to be resolved in a future release of
    ICU.</p>

    <p>The following describes how to setup and build ICU.</p>

    <ul>
      <li>
        Requirements: 

        <ul>
          <li>QSHELL interpreter installed (install base option 30, operating
          system)</li>
          <!--li>QShell Utilities, PRPQ 5799-XEH (not required for V4R5)</li-->

          <li>ILE C/C++ Compiler for iSeries, LPP 5722-WDS</li>

          <li>The latest GNU facilities (You can get the GNU facilities for
          OS/400 from <a href=
          "http://www.as400.ibm.com/developer/factory/porting/gnu_utilities.html">
          http://www.as400.ibm.com/developer/factory/porting/gnu_utilities.html</a>).
          Older versions may not work properly.</li>
        </ul>
        <!-- end requirements -->
      </li>

      <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.<br>
             
<pre>
<samp>CRTLIB LIB(<i>libraryname</i>)</samp>
</pre>
            <br>
          </li>

          <li>
            Set up the following environment variables in your build process
            (use the <i>libraryname</i> from the previous step) 
<pre>
<samp>ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(CC) VALUE('/usr/bin/icc')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(CXX) VALUE('/usr/bin/icc')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(MAKE) VALUE('/usr/bin/gmake')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(OUTPUTDIR) VALUE('<i>libraryname</i>')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(QIBM_MULTI_THREADED) VALUE('Y')</samp>
</pre>
            <i>libraryname</i> identifies target as400 library for *module,
            *pgm and *srvpgm objects. The QIBM_MULTI_THREADED environment
            variable is only needed for the multithreaded tests to pass.<br>
            <br>
          </li>
          <!--li>Add QCXXN, to your build process library list. This results in the resolution of CRTCPPMOD used by the icc compiler</li-->

          <li>
            In order to get the tests to run correctly, the QUTCOFFSET needs to
            be set to the Pacific Time Zone offset.<br>
            <br>
             To check your QUTCOFFSET: 
<pre>
<samp>DSPSYSVAL SYSVAL(QUTCOFFSET)</samp>
</pre>
            <br>
             To change your QUTCOFFSET:<br>
<pre>
<samp>CHGSYSVAL SYSVAL(QUTCOFFSET) VALUE('-0800')</samp>
</pre>
            You should change -0800 to -0700 for daylight savings.<br>
            <br>
          </li>

          <li>Run 'CHGJOB CCSID(37)'</li>

          <li>Run 'QSH'</li>

          <li>Run gunzip on the ICU source code compressed tar archive
          (icu-<i>X</i>-<i>Y</i>.tar.gz or icu-<i>X</i>-<i>Y</i>.tgz).</li>

          <li>Run unpax-icu.sh on the tar file from the ICU download page.</li>

          <li>Change your current directory to icu/source.</li>

          <li>Run 'cp ../as_is/os400/configure .'</li>

          <li>Run './configure --host=as400-os400
          --with-data-packaging=archive'</li>

          <li>Run 'gmake' to build ICU.</li>

          <li>Run 'gmake check' to run the tests.</li>
        </ol>
        <!-- end build environment -->
      </li>
    </ul>

    <h2><a name="ImportantNotes" href="#ImportantNotes">Important Notes About
    Using ICU</a></h2>

    <h3><a name="ImportantNotesCPlusPlus" href="#ImportantNotesCPlusPlus">Using
    ICU in a Multithreaded Environment</a></h3>

    <p>If you are using ICU in a multithreaded application, there may be a
    chance that the ICU global mutex is not initialized properly. Normally the
    ICU global mutex is initialized during C++ static initialization, but there
    are some compilers and linkers that do not properly perform C++ static
    initialization in a library (this sometimes happens on HP/UX and on MacOS
    X).</p>

    <p>Upon the first usage of most ICU APIs, the global mutex will get
    initialized. For example, you could call uloc_countAvailable() or
    uloc_getDefault() from your main() function before any threads are created.
    Those functions will initialize the global mutex. Without one of these
    function calls from a single thread, the data caches inside ICU may get
    initialized more than once, which may cause memory leaks and other
    problems. This problem normally does not happen when C++ static
    initialization works properly.</p>

    <p>ICU does not use C++ static initialization for anything else, and
    disabling threads in ICU will disable all C++ static initialization in
    ICU.</p>

    <h3><a name="MakeICUSmaller" href="#MakeICUSmaller">How to Make ICU
    Smaller</a></h3>

    <p>For some environments, ICU "is too large". There are two ways to remove
    parts and make it smaller: Remove some of its library code modules from the
    build (reducing functionality), or remove some of its data (possibly
    reducing only codepage/locale/etc. coverage without sacrifycing overall
    functionality). For details about reducing the data size see the <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/">User Guide</a> "ICU Data"
    chapter.</p>

    <p>The header file <code>source/common/unicode/uconfig.h</code> contains
    source-code-level "switches" corresponding to <code>#if</code> directives
    in the ICU source code. Setting one of the <code>UCONFIG_NO_...</code>
    switches to 1 (by setting <code>CFLAGS/CPPFLAGS</code> or adding a
    <code>#define</code> at the beginning of <code>uconfig.h</code>) turns off
    the code associated with one of the ICU service modules. Setting one of the
    <code>UCONFIG_ONLY_...</code> switches to 1 turns off all modules that are
    not essential for the functioning of the associated "only" service. For the
    current set of available switches see <code>uconfig.h</code> itself.</p>

    <p>When a source code module is turned off, then the data-building
    makefiles should be modified to not generate the data files that are used
    with that module. Some of the data-generating genxyz tools rely on the
    module itself to build its data; they will generate dummy data files to
    satisfy the dependencies of the unmodified makefiles (to make these
    switches easily testable). Other data files for which the tools do not rely
    on the related library modules (e.g., mapping tables [<code>.cnv</code>]
    and transliterator files [<code>.res</code>, from
    <code>source/data/translit/</code>]) continue to be built unless the data
    makefiles are modified. For further details on data building see the <a
    href="http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/">User Guide</a> "ICU Data"
    chapter.</p>

    <h3><a name="ImportantNotesBinaryCompat" href=
    "#ImportantNotesBinaryCompat">Binary Compatibility</a></h3>

    <p>Even though the ICU development team tries to make a stable API, some
    breaking changes are required from time to time. ICU does not guarentee
    binary compatibility of its functions or its data between releases. Please
    view the <a href=
    "http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/design.html">ICU Design</a>
    chapter of the User's Guide for details.</p>

    <h3><a name="ImportantNotesWindows" href="#ImportantNotesWindows">Windows
    Platform</a></h3>

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

    <h4>DLL directories and the PATH setting</h4>

    <p>As delivered, the International Components for Unicode build as several
    DLLs, which are placed in the "<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin" directory. You must
    add this directory 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>

    <h4><a name="ImportantNotesWindowsPath">Changing your PATH</a></h4>

    <ul>
      <li><strong>Windows 2000</strong>: Use the System Icon in the Control
      Panel. Pick the "Advanced" tab. Select the "Environment Variables..."
      button. Select the variable PATH in the lower box, and select the lower
      "Edit..." button. In the "Variable Value" box, append the string
      ";<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin" to the end of the path string. If there is
      nothing there, just type in "<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin". Click the Set
      button, then the OK button.</li>

      <li><strong>Windows NT</strong>: Use the System Icon in the Control
      Panel. Pick the "Environment" tab, and select the variable PATH in the
      lower box. In the "value" box, append the string
      ";<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin" at the end of the path string. If there is
      nothing there, just type in "<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin". Click the Set
      button, then the OK button.</li>

      <li><strong>Windows 95/98/ME</strong>: Edit the autoexec.bat, and add the
      following line to the end of file, "SET
      PATH=%PATH%;<i>&lt;ICU&gt;</i>\bin"</li>
    </ul>

    <p>Note: When packaging a Windows application for distribution and
    installation on user systems, copies of the ICU DLLs should be included
    with the application, and installed for exclusive use by the application.
    This is the only way to insure that your app is running with the same
    version of ICU, built with exactly the same options, that you developed and
    tested with. Refer to Microsoft's guidelines on the usage of DLLs, or
    search for the phrase "DLL hell" on <a href=
    "http://msdn.microsoft.com/">msdn.microsoft.com</a>.</p>

    <h4>Linking with Runtime libraries</h4>

    <p>All the DLLs link with the C runtime library "Debug Multithreaded DLL"
    or "Multithreaded DLL." (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 get random memory errors when you run the executable.<br>
    </p>

    <h3><a name="ImportantNotesUnix" href="#ImportantNotesUnix">Unix Type
    Platform</a></h3>

    <p>If you are building on a Unix platform, and if you are installing ICU in
    a non-standard location, you may need to add the location of your ICU
    libraries to your <strong>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</strong> or
    <strong>LIBPATH</strong> environment variable (or the equivalent runtime
    library path environment variable for your system). The ICU libraries may
    not link or load properly without doing this.</p>

    <p>Note that if you do not want to have to set this variable, you may
    instead use the --enable-rpath option at configuration time. This option
    will instruct the linker to always look for the libraries where they are
    installed. You will need to use the appropriate linker options when linking
    your own applications and libraries against ICU, too. Please refer to your
    system's linker manual for information about runtime paths. The use of
    rpath also means that when building a new version of ICU you should not
    have an older version installed in the same place as the new version's
    installation directory, as the older libraries will used during the build,
    instead of the new ones, likely leading to an incorrectly build ICU. (This
    is the proper behavior of rpath.)</p>

    <h3><a name="ImportantNotesDefaultCP" href="#ImportantNotesDefaultCP">Using
    the default codepage</a></h3>

    <p>ICU has code to determine the default codepage of the system or process.
    This default codepage can be used to convert <code>char *</code> strings to
    and from Unicode.</p>

    <p>Depending on system design, setup and APIs, it may not always be
    possible to find a default codepage that fully works as expected. For
    example,</p>

    <ul>
      <li>On Windows there are three encodings in use at the same time. Unicode
      (UTF-16) is always used inside of Windows, while for <code>char *</code>
      encodings there are two classes, called "ANSI" and "OEM" codepages. ICU
      will use the ANSI codepage. Note that the OEM codepage is used by default
      for console window output.</li>

      <li>On some Unix-type systems, non-standard names are used for encodings,
      or non-standard encodings are used altogether. Although ICU supports 200
      encodings in its standard build and many more aliases for them, it will
      not be able to recognize such non-standard names.</li>

      <li>Some systems do not have a notion of a system or process codepage,
      and may not have APIs for that.</li>
    </ul>

    <p>If you have means of detecting a default codepage name that are more
    appropriate for your application, then you should set that name with
    <code>ucnv_setDefaultName()</code> as the first ICU function call. This
    makes sure that the internally cached default converter will be
    instantiated from your preferred name.</p>

    <p>Starting in ICU 2.0, when a converter for the default codepage cannot be
    opened, a fallback default codepage name and converter will be used. On
    most platforms, this will be US-ASCII. For z/OS (OS/390), ibm-1047-s390 is
    the default fallback codepage. For AS/400 (iSeries), ibm-37 is the default
    fallback codepage. This default fallback codepage is used when the
    operating system is using a non-standard name for a default codepage, or
    the converter was not packaged with ICU. The feature allows ICU to run in
    unusual computing environments without completely failing.</p>

    <h2><a name="PlatformDependencies" href="#PlatformDependencies">Platform
    Dependencies</a></h2>

    <p>The platform dependencies have been mostly isolated into the following
    files in the common library. This information can be useful if you are
    porting ICU to a new platform.</p>

    <ul>
      <li>
        <strong>unicode/platform.h.in</strong> (autoconf'ed platforms)<br>
         <strong>unicode/p<i>XXXX</i>.h</strong> (others: pwin32.h, pmacos.h,
        ..): Platform-dependent typedefs and defines:<br>
        <br>
         

        <ul>
          <li>XP_CPLUSPLUS for C++ only.</li>

          <li>TRUE and FALSE, UBool, int8_t, int16_t etc.</li>

          <li>U_EXPORT and U_IMPORT for specifying dynamic library import and
          export</li>
        </ul>
        <br>
      </li>

      <li>
        <strong>unicode/putil.h, putil.c</strong>: platform-dependent
        implementations of various functions that are platform dependent:<br>
        <br>
         

        <ul>
          <li>uprv_isNaN, uprv_isInfinite, uprv_getNaN and uprv_getInfinity for
          handling special floating point values.</li>

          <li>uprv_tzset, uprv_timezone, uprv_tzname and time for getting
          platform specific time and time zone information.</li>

          <li>u_getDataDirectory for getting the default data directory.</li>

          <li>uprv_getDefaultLocaleID for getting the default locale
          setting.</li>

          <li>uprv_getDefaultCodepage for getting the default codepage
          encoding.</li>
        </ul>
        <br>
      </li>

      <li>
        <strong>umutex.h, umutex.c</strong>: 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 Users' guide for
        more information.<br>
        <br>
         

        <ul>
          <li>We supply sample implementations for WinNT, Win95, Win98,
          Sun/Solaris, RedHat/Linux, HP-UX and for AIX on an RS/6000.</li>
        </ul>
        <br>
      </li>

      <li><strong>umapfile.h, umapfile.c</strong>: functions for mapping or
      otherwise reading or loading files into memory. All access by ICU to data
      from files makes use of these functions.<br>
      <br>
      </li>

      <li>For the intltest test suite, intltest.cpp in
      "icu/source/test/intltest/" contains the method pathnameInContext, which
      must also be adapted to any new platform.</li>

      <li>Using platform specific #ifdef macros are highly discouraged outside
      of the scope of these files. When the source code gets updated in the
      future, these #ifdef's can cause testing problems for your platform.</li>
    </ul>

    <p>It is possible to build each library individually. They must be built in
    the following order:<br>
    </p>

    <ol>
      <li>stubdata</li>

      <li>common</li>

      <li>i18n</li>

      <li>toolutil</li>

      <li>makeconv</li>

      <li>gencnval</li>

      <li>genprops</li>

      <li>gennames</li>

      <li>genpname</li>

      <li>gennorm</li>

      <li>genbrk</li>

      <li>genuca</li>

      <li>genrb</li>

      <li>gentz</li>

      <li>genccode</li>

      <li>gencmn</li>

      <li>pkgdata</li>

      <li>makedata (a project on Windows, or source/data/Makefile on Unix)</li>

      <li>ctestfw, intltest and cintltst, if you want to run the test
      suite.</li>

      <li>uconv and ustdio can also be optionally built.</li>
    </ol>
    <hr>

    <p>Copyright &copy; 1997-2002 International Business Machines Corporation
    and others. All Rights Reserved.<br>
     IBM Globalization Center of Competency - San Jose,<br>
     5600 Cottle Road, San Jos&eacute;, CA 95193<br>
     All rights reserved.</p>
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