Creating Universal Systems

"There is only one problem with common sense is not very common."
- Bryce's Law

GENERAL DISCUSSION

In this era of "globalization" more
Information systems are crossing geographical boundaries. Therefore, serious consideration should be given to making the system universally applicable to all countries. Some might
consider this an impossible task, but it is easier than you
might think. It just requires a little commonsense and some planning.

The biggest problem to make the universal system is that programmers tend to bury too many details of a system in the source code of the program, which is not a good place to tinker around in. Instead, some system elements must be placed in separate files which makes it easy to translate. Should consider creating separate files for:

PRINT MAPS - output as a report or print, can be decomposed intodifferent sections (documents). When a program is executed, one of the parameters should be the desired language (eg English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, etc.). Based on this parameter, relevant printed cards are called from a "Print Map File" to assemble the required output.

PANEL DISPLAY - This is similar to the "Print card folder, in which sections or screen can be decomposed into its various expert groups (again using the files). As a program is executed, Panels are relevantcalled from a "panel files" to build the screen.

MESSAGES - Messages are too often buried in the source code. Instead, they must be placed in a separate file for printing or display in a screen.

Help - help text should also be maintained separately to facilitate research.

Separation of maps, signs, text messages and support from program source code, it is easy to translate into foreign languages. In addition, it encourages developers to share and reuse of resources,thereby contributing to an integrated system.

A serious consideration in the Far East is the Double Byte Character Set or DBCS is used to accommodate alphabets Japanese and Chinese characters with large characters. To build such a character, two bytes must be stored in one byte (hence the name "DBCS"). Fortunately, technology has evolved and DBCS is implemented in most current operating systems. However, developers must be aware of this requirement,particularly due to the design inputs, outputs and files. Check with your hardware vendor or operating system for specifics. Better yet, check it out on the Internet.

INPUT / OUTPUT DESIGN

In the design of entrances and exits, special attention should be given to the expression of certain types of data elements, for example:

DATES - What dates should be expressed may vary from country to country, for example: November 13, 2004 to November 13, 2004 - 2004-11-13. How a dateis brought to an end user is different from how it is physically stored.

TIME - This is similar to dates, some people like to see AM / PM, others such as military time, eg, 14:30 (2:30 pm)

NOTE: Regardless of how dates and times are to be physically presented to the user, standards should be there to express how dates should be physically stored, such as "YYYYMMDDHHMMSS (year / month / day / hour / minute / second). Do not do caused the terrible year 2000 (Y2K) problem a few yearsago.

Time Zone - representing local time.

CURRENCY - What form of currency values should be expressed, dollar, yen, Marks, Pounds, Euro Dollars?

MEASURES - host of different measurement units for weight (in pounds vs. grams), distances (miles vs. meters) and temperature (Fahrenheit vs. Celsius).

TEXT - The Western world prefers text display horizontally from left to right, but as we enter the Eastern European countries, they like to see the text vertically, sometimesfrom right to left.

Several operating systems now provide the means to capture such contexts. However, it may be necessary to establish a separate "Personal Settings File" for a particular system information.

Attention should also be given to the default settings, especially at time of entry. In addition, where applicable, consider "self UPSHIFTING" or "downshift" text if necessary. For example, most Internet addresses (eg a URL or e-mail)
should beopted.

The techniques mentioned above are simple and effective to implement. It is important that a strategy of translation is considered part of the system design. When designing your mantra should be "Know your audience, make it usable, think globally."

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