Published on 25th October 2003
There is a strong need for multilingual support. Till date most of the websites use the most common and prevailing data entry format i.e. True Type fonts based on the ASCII 8 bit storage. But now the data is available in different formats that cannot be easily reused or deployed. But with the fast growing need of making information available into various languages, there is strong need to deploy a unified mechanism of data storage, which can be used across platforms, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. If the Information available on the web is multilingual it has to have the features like Search and should be easily sorted. This is not possible with the storage mechanism followed till date.
With these anomalies, making Information available in languages seems to be difficult. But with the advent of Standards like Unicode and OpenType Fonts, these anomalies have been overcome. Moreover the advent of Microsoft Office XP has also helped. Microsoft Office XP contains various input mechanisms available for languages like Hindi, and most of the other Indian Languages. By using the Unicode Standard and the Open Type Font Formats, making a lingual Website becomes more easy due to the availability of data which can be easily used across platforms irrespective of the language and can be searched and Sorted easily.
By using the Unicode Standard and the Open Type Font Formats we are now able to achieve most of our target of making a lingual Website. By having the data which can be easily used across platforms irrespective of the language and which can be searched and Sorted easily.
Now before storing the data, it has to be actually entered first. Till date because of the different storing mechanisms there are different input mediums to suit them respectively.
Unicode Standard
Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language. The Unicode Standard has a lot of room to grow, and there are a considerable number of scripts that will be encoded in upcoming versions. This process is strictly additive. These stability guarantees make it possible to encode data in Unicode and expect that future implementations that conform to a later version of the Unicode Standard will be able to interpret them in the same way, as implementations conforming to The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0.
OpenType Font format
The OpenType font format, jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe is an extension of the TrueType font format, adding support for PostScript font data. OpenType fonts and the operating system services which support OpenType fonts provide users with a simple way to install and use fonts, whether the fonts contain TrueType outlines or CFF (PostScript) outlines.
Office XP
Office XP, provides a variety of tools that allow organizations to create and extend their solutions to the Web. Office XP emphasizes the need to make more effective use of the Web and Office together in order to get access to this information. Office XP delivers unique ways to facilitate the coordination and communication with team members both inside and outside of a user's organization.
Thus more specifically, Office XP offers organizations the tools to help build and edit powerful Web-based and collaborative solutions, and to lower costs associated with deploying, managing, and administering Office applications.