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Internationalisation (i18n) has always been an (often ignored) problem for developers. The globalised marketplace, combined with the growing popularity of web applications, has now pushed this problem to centre stage. This paper will explore the challenges of adding i18n support to an existing web application, using the example of Obsidian's Jet billing system and other web development experiences. This includes:
Recognising the symptoms - what are these weird characters that keep turning up in my document?
End-to-end web application stack support, including:
Display: Apache default configuration, HTML encodings, varying browser support.
Code: Encoding support in different languages:
Python Unicode data types.
PHP 6's new Unicode support.
Ruby's string management and encoding hacks.
Database support: MySQL, collation types.
Framework comparison - how do the popular frameworks support i18n?
Zope - Unicode support, Placeless translation Service.
Pylons - Unicode support.
Rails - Translation plugins.
Related problems:
Printing.
PDF – fonts.
Legacy data – conversion.

Stream: Web & Online Technologies

Paper: Internationalisation For The Web, Internationalisation For The Web

Simon Hildebrandt is a seasoned web developer with experience in Perl, PHP and Python. He is passionate about web standards and technologies - his previous presentation at OSDC, 'JavaScript Game Development', introduced many people to the concept of AJAX for the first time. He currently develops web applications in Ruby on Rails and Python for Obsidian Consulting Group in Melbourne, Australia.