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Inside Macintosh: Text /


Chapter 1 - Introduction to Text on the Macintosh

This chapter is an overview of Macintosh text handling. It is meant to help you
get started by introducing the concepts described in detail throughout the rest of Inside Macintosh: Text.

The chapter contains four major sections. The first presents high-level concepts, and the following three develop those concepts further and give important programming suggestions and hints:

If you are developing a text-handling application, read this chapter's first section, "Macintosh Text Overview," before reading any other parts of this book. You can then either read the remainder of this chapter before going on, or start immediately on the other chapters, returning to this chapter as needed for further explanation of script-system concepts and for specific programming suggestions. The chapters that are most important for general application development are "TextEdit," "QuickDraw Text," "Font Manager," "Text Utilities," and "Script Manager." The chapters that are most important for applications that use input methods, or for developers of input methods, are "Text Services Manager" and "Dictionary Manager."

If you are developing or modifying a script system, read this chapter completely before turning to other chapters and appendixes. Those that are most important for understanding script-system design are "Script Manager," "Built-in Script Support," "International Resources," and "Keyboard Resources."

Valuable information related to the topics discussed in this chapter can be found in
Guide to Macintosh Software Localization. That book discusses features of individual script systems and gives specific techniques for software localization.


Chapter Contents
Macintosh Text Overview
Separation of Tasks
Text Is Graphics
Characters, Glyphs, Character Codes, and Bytes
Text Storage
Keyboards and Input Methods
Writing Systems and Script Systems
Macintosh Text Utilities
TextEdit, a Text-Processing Service
Planning Your Text Handling Capabilities
Rudimentary Text Handling
Moderate Text Handling
Sophisticated Text Handling
Writing Systems and Script Systems
Features of the World's Writing Systems
Character Representation
Line Direction and Alignment
Contextual Forms and Character Reordering
Diacritical Marks
Uppercase and Lowercase Characters
Word Demarcation
Styles
Numbers, Currencies, and Dates
Character Order and Text Sorting
Variations Among Languages and Regions
Components of the Macintosh Script Management System
The Macintosh Text Managers
The Script Manager
QuickDraw
Font Manager
Text Utilities
Text Services Manager
Dictionary Manager
The WorldScript Extensions
WorldScript I
WorldScript II
Components of a Script System
International Resources
Keyboard Resources
Fonts
How Script Systems Are Classified
Types of Script Systems
Script Codes, Language Codes, and Region Codes
Script Codes and Resource ID Numbers
The System Script and Auxiliary Scripts
Font Script and Keyboard Script
How Script Systems Work
Character Encoding
The Standard Roman Character Set
Inconsistencies in Roman Character Encoding
Other 1-Byte Character Encodings
2-Byte Character Encodings
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
Font Handling
Font Availability and Selection
System Font and Application Font
Roman Characters and Associated Fonts
Other Font Issues
Character Rendering and Text Display
Storage Order and Display Order
Line Direction and Alignment
Primary Line Direction
Alignment
Justification
Style Runs, Font Runs, Script Runs, Direction Runs
Text Layout
Caret Handling
The Caret
Caret Positions at Direction Boundaries
Caret Movement With Arrow Keys
Highlighting
Unidirectional Text
Mixed-Directional Text
Converting Screen Position to Text Offset
Printing
Text Input
Keyboards and Key Translation
Font and Keyboard Synchronization
Handling Keyboard Equivalents
Input Methods
Entry and Conversion
Differences Among Script Systems
Text Manipulation
Sorting Strings
Formatting Dates, Times, Numbers, and Symbols
Dates and Times
Numbers and Symbols
Analyzing Characters
Searching, Modifying, and Converting Text
Finding Word Boundaries and Line Breaks
Script Systems in Use
Installing and Enabling Script Systems
Components of the System Script
Components of Auxiliary Scripts
Installing Modifications to a Script System
How the User Switches Among Script Systems
User Control of Script Settings

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© Apple Computer, Inc.
6 JUL 1996