Software Internationalization Guide

Software Internationalization Guide—526225-002

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POSIX and XPG Internationalization

Model

This section gives a general overview of the POSIX and XPG internationalization

model. The scope of the POSIX and XPG standards is much greater than the

information covered in this publication—for details on these standards, see the POSIX

and XPG guidelines.

Standards Organizations

The computer industry has formed organizations to create and help maintain

international standards for operating systems and programming languages to address

the increasing demand for data portability and consistency. Organizations participating

in this effort include POSIX, XPG, ISO, and Uniforum.

POSIX

The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a standard developed by a group

of committees (called “dot groups”) formed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers (IEEE). Each dot group concentrates on producing specifications for a

particular aspect of the system. These specifications are usually referred to as

“POSIX.n,”where n represents the dot group. The POSIX.1 and POSIX.2

specifications contain the most information about internationalization.

XPG

X/Open is an industry consortium that creates system specifications. Companies that

are members of X/Open agree to conform to the specifications, which are available in a

series of publications named the X/Open Portability Guide (XPG). Each release

number is appended to the XPG abbreviation; for example, release 4 of the X/Open

Portability Guide is called the XPG4 specification.

ISO

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) promotes national standards

to international standards. ISO contributed a series of eight-bit code sets, ISO 8859,

that supports Latin, Cyrillic, and many other Western European alphabet scripts. ISO is

also responsible for contributing the universal code set ISO 10646, which includes

characters for most modern written languages in the world.

Uniforum

Uniforum is an international association of open systems professionals that contributes

to various standards. As a technical resource for both formal and informal standards