L10n Layercake
Daniel Yacob has developed a nice schematic for understanding how the standards and technologies fit together in supporting localisation: a "layercake" inspired by a similar approach for describing the "semantic web." A full explanation with links is available at http://yacob.org/L10nLayerCake/ .
The image is reproduced here with permission:
Explanations of abbreviations and terms: [in process]
- BDF - Bitmap Distribution Format (font format)
- CLDR - Common Locale Data Repository
- CSS - Cascading Style Sheets (W3C has worked a lot on this)
- IIIMF - Internet Intranet Input Method Framework
- ICU - [Interactive Chart Utility ?]
- ISO - International Organisation for Standardisation
- LDML - Locale Data Markup Language
- OTF - Open Type Fonts
- Pango - a library for laying out and rendering of text http://www.pango.org/
- PO
- SCIM - Smart Common Input Method
- TR
- TTF - True Type Fonts
- UCD - Unicode Character Database
- Unicode
- XLIFF - XML Localization Interchange File Format
