In a global society people expect to be able to use software according to their own cultural and linguistic background. Much of current software is written assuming American culture and language. This unit deals with the issues of writing software that matches user expectations. There will be an increasing need for professionals who understand the needs of internationalised software and who are able to design and implement such software

An important consideration for IT applications that are used worldwide or in a multicultural environment is that the applications should be customisable to local culture and language. This is even more important for distributed systems such as the World Wide Web. This unit attempts to fill in a gap in the Faculty's existing offerings by dealing with the theoretical, design and implementation issues of internationalisation.

This unit helps to meet the Faculty strategic plan of incorporating international perspectives in the curriculum

Survey of different languages and cultural differences. Formatting of information: number, name, address, date and currency formats. Character sets: ASCII, ISO 8859, Unicode, ISO 10646 and specialised character sets such as Chinese Big-5. Collation: sorting and searching. Character and word properties: alphabetic, whitespace, etc. Presentation of characters: visual representation of glyphs, direction of representation. Locales. Internationalisation techniques. Localisation techniques. Selection of text.Input methods. Distributed sytems: locale negotiation, HTML documents and web services

Presentation of theoretical and practical material, plus hand-on experience in applying, using and extending the concepts

The theory covered in this unit requires immediate application to enable effective learning. The main teaching strategy will be to cover the material in lectures followed by laboratory sessions which will give hands on practice in applying the concepts. Students will gain experience in designing andwriting applications which can be customised to local environments.

Lectures: The lectures will provide the theoretical base for the subject by introducing the main topics, providing students with an understanding of the principles underlying the unit. The lectures will address the knowledge and understanding requirements of objectives 1 to 3.

Tutorials: Tutorials in computer laboratories will give students the opportunity to develop their understanding and skills through programming exercises (objectives 2 and 4)

The final examination will test the underlying concepts of objectives 1 to 4, and will also require students to demonstrate adequate mastery of some of the associated skills.

One 2 hour lecture per week. One 2 hour laboratory tutorial per week. Eight hours of private study and assignment completion per week

• Software Title:
• Vendor:
• Version:
• OS: MS Windows XP ( ) and/or LINUX ( )
• License Details: (A valid software license certificate/s or Vendor permission must be available upon request if the software is to be installed for teaching)
• Are we currently licensed: Yes ( ) or No ( ) (If unsure, please check with your local IT support )
• If (Yes), who is the contact person for this software?:
• If (No), will the software license be arranged by: Staff member requesting the software ( ) or Technical Services* ( ) ? *If the latter is selected, please discuss your requirement/s with myself ASAP, prior to finalising your request, as there could be financial or resourcing implications.
• Is the software to be installed and accessed from a: Client/Workstation ( ), or Server ( ) ?
• Type of license: Site License ( ), Freeware ( ), FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) ( ), Shareware ( ), Lab based ( ) # of Licenses needed ____
• In what week will you commence using the software in class? Semester 1 (Week ___ ) and/or Semester 2 (Week ___ ):
• Nominated Staff For Acceptance Testing Software: (Name) (Phone) (Email)
• Additional Information: Special Requirements, Software Configuration/Installation Requirements, etc:

Standard laboratory software

None