education resources about languages in Ubuntu/PCs?

[anotherChris]

I want to learn about languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, etc...) in OSs/computing at a level more basic than "how to". When I try Googling for education sources on this topic, I get lots of pages about "computer programming languages" or how to pages on installing language packs. I want to know things like how OSs deal with different keyboard layouts, how Chinese characters are inputed during word processing, etc. I hope there is some thorough introduction to the subject. Videos, books, websites all are okay. What are your recommendations for learning about how Operating Systems deal with languages?

[TheFu]

Unicode - aka utf8.

Before Unicode, we had all sorts of terrible work-arounds. Not all languages support unicode well, so stick with languages that have a clear method for dealing with unicode for the UI and all user input.

[anotherChris]

I think I found my answer. The search term "computer localization" brings up lots of information I am looking for rather than using the term "language" to search.

@TheFu - thanks

[TheFu]

I think I found my answer. The search term "computer localization" brings up lots of information I am looking for rather than using the term "language" to search.

@TheFu - thanks

Ah ... I thought you wanted to create programs that supported as many languages as possible, not just looking for ways to use different languages in a normal desktop. Localization and setting the language for input has been possible on Unix for decades. I know my editor has handled it using digraphs for a long time. <cntl>-k begins the digraph input. Á í ó é ñ ç are quick examples, but lots of other characters can be input too ... fractions ¾, ½, ⅓, subscripts H₂O, superscripts ³ (cubed), lots and lots of interesting characters. ß if you are learning German. Greek, Arabic, and Cyrillic characters. There's nearly an ∞ number of possible choices. Ok, there's definitely a limit, but math is covered. ∫ ∬

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I seldom need other characters, but when I do, the most common are available. If I needed a completely different character set, then I'd know more about changing the inputs and would likely have a different keyboard. When I was working in Asia, it was amazing how they typed in their native languages. Each key had 4 symbols and as they typed, a little list of commonly used words would be shown that could be selected. All I knew how to do was to set the LANG to En_US so I could work.