This manual describes many of the issues involved with developing and delivering ESL applications for use by people from different cultures, and how the ESL language assists in accomplishing this. Often, software developed in one country has limitations that do not meet the cultural and local needs of other countries. This material will help ESL developers to deliver successful applications to non-English-speaking users. The first few sections of this document cover general issues, and the final sections cover ESL-specific areas.

ESL Internationalization contains the following sections:

•Overview provides an overview of the issues with internationalizing applications.

•Number Formats describes support for different forms of numeric input and display.

•Date and Time Formats describes support for different date and time formats.

•Text Entry and Manipulation explains how text input may be validated and text strings manipulated.

•Externalizing Strings documents External String support that allows ESL applications to be translated to multiple spoken languages without needing to rewrite the application.

•Changing External Strings Dynamically describes how to use External Strings for applications that must change the language they display at runtime.

•Character Sets discusses the issue of different character sets and code pages.

•English Runtime Error Messages explains how to translate the ESL runtime error messages.