13 Customizing Locale

Configuring Unicode Fonts for the Oracle Locale Builder

The Oracle Locale Builder uses Unicode characters in many of its functions. For example, it shows the mapping of local character code points to Unicode code points. Oracle Locale Builder depends on the local fonts that are available on the operating system where the characters are rendered. Therefore, Oracle recommends that you use a Unicode font to fully support the Oracle Locale Builder. If a character cannot be rendered with your local fonts, then it will probably be displayed as an empty box.

dialog.n=Arial Unicode MS, DEFAULT_CHARSET
dialoginput.n=Arial Unicode MS, DEFAULT_CHARSET
serif.n=Arial Unicode MS, DEFAULT_CHARSET
sansserif.n=Arial Unicode MS, DEFAULT_CHARSET

serif.plain.3=-ricoh-hg mincho l-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-m-*-jisx0201.1976-0

The Oracle Locale Builder User Interface

Ensure that the ORACLE_HOME parameter is set before starting Oracle Locale Builder.

In the UNIX operating system, start the Oracle Locale Builder by changing into the $ORACLE_HOME/nls/lbuilder directory and issuing the following command:

% ./lbuilder

In a Windows operating system, start the Oracle Locale Builder from the Start menu as follows: Start > Programs > Oracle-OraHome10 > Configuration and Migration Tools > Locale Builder. You can also start it from the DOS prompt by entering the %ORACLE_HOME%\nls\lbuilder directory and executing the lbuilder.bat command.

When you start the Oracle Locale Builder, the screen shown in Figure 13-1 appears.

Figure 13-1 Oracle Locale Builder Utility

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Oracle Locale Builder Windows and Dialog Boxes

Before using Oracle Locale Builder for a specific task, you should become familiar with tab pages and dialog boxes that include the following:

• Existing Definitions Dialog Box

• Session Log Dialog Box

• Preview NLT Tab Page

• Open File Dialog Box

  
  

  Note: Oracle Locale Builder includes online help.

  
  

Existing Definitions Dialog Box

When you choose New Language, New Territory, New Character Set, or New Linguistic Sort, the first tab page that you see is labelled General. Click Show Existing Definitions to see the Existing Definitions dialog box.

The Existing Definitions dialog box enables you to open locale objects by name. If you know a specific language, territory, linguistic sort (collation), or character set that you want to start with, then click its displayed name. For example, you can open the AMERICAN language definition file as shown in Figure 13-2.

Figure 13-2 Existing Definitions Dialog Box

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Choosing AMERICAN opens the lx00001.nlb file. An NLB file is a binary file that contains the settings for a specific language, territory, character set, or linguistic sort.

Language and territory abbreviations are for reference only and cannot be opened.

Session Log Dialog Box

Choose Tools > View Log to see the Session Log dialog box. The Session Log dialog box shows what actions have been taken in the current session. Click Save Log to keep a record of all changes. Figure 13-3 shows an example of a session log.

Figure 13-3 Session Log Dialog Box

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Preview NLT Tab Page

The NLT file is an XML file with the file extension .nlt that shows the settings for a specific language, territory, character set, or linguistic sort. The Preview NLT tab page presents a readable form of the file so that you can see whether the changes you have made look correct. You cannot modify the NLT file from the Preview NLT tab page. You must use the specific elements of the Oracle Locale Builder to modify the NLT file.

Figure 13-4 shows an example of the Preview NLT tab page for a user-defined language called AMERICAN FRENCH.

Figure 13-4 Previewing the NLT File

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Open File Dialog Box

You can see the Open File dialog box by choosing File > Open > By File Name. Then choose the NLB file that you want to modify or use as a template. An NLB file is a binary file with the file extension .nlb that contains the binary equivalent of the information in the NLT file. Figure 13-5 shows the Open File dialog box with the lx00001.nlb file selected. The Preview pane shows that this NLB file is for the AMERICAN language.

Figure 13-5 Open File Dialog Box

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Customizing Time Zone Data

The time zone files contain the valid time zone names. The following information is included for each time zone:

• Offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

• Transition times for daylight savings time

• Abbreviations for standard time and daylight savings time. The abbreviations are used with the time zone names.

Two time zone files are included in the Oracle home directory. The default file is oracore/zoneinfo/timezlrg.dat. The commonly used and smaller time zones are included in oracore/zoneinfo/timezone.dat.

Customizing Calendars with the NLS Calendar Utility

Oracle supports several calendars. All of them are defined with data derived from Oracle's globalization support, but some of them may require the addition of ruler eras or deviation days in the future. To add this information without waiting for a new release of the Oracle database server, you can use an external file that is automatically loaded when the calendar functions are executed.

Calendar data is first defined in a text file. The text definition file must be converted into binary format. You can use the NLS Calendar Utility (lxegen) to convert the text definition file into binary format.

The name of the text definition file and its location for the lxegen utility are hard-coded and depend on the platform. On UNIX platforms, the file name is lxecal.nlt. It is located in the $ORACLE_HOME/nls directory. A sample text definition file is included in the $ORACLE_HOME/nls/demo directory.

The lxegen utility produces a binary file from the text definition file. The name of the binary file is also hard-coded and depends on the platform. On UNIX platforms, the name of the binary file is lxecal.nlb. The binary file is generated in the same directory as the text file and overwrites an existing binary file.

After the binary file has been generated, it is automatically loaded during system initialization. Do not move or rename the file.

Invoke the calendar utility from the command line as follows:

% lxegen

Character Sets with User-Defined Characters

User-defined characters are typically supported within East Asian character sets. These East Asian character sets have at least one range of reserved code points for user-defined characters. For example, Japanese Shift-JIS preserves 1880 code points for user-defined characters. They are shown in Table 13-1.

The Oracle character sets listed in Table 13-2 contain predefined ranges that support user-defined characters.

Oracle Character Set Conversion Architecture

The code point value that represents a particular character can vary among different character sets. A Japanese kanji character is shown in Figure 13-21.

Figure 13-21 Japanese Kanji Character

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The following table shows how the character is encoded in different character sets.

In Oracle, all character sets are defined in terms of Unicode 4.0 code points. That is, each character is defined as a Unicode 4.0 code value. Character conversion takes place transparently to users by using Unicode as the intermediate form. For example, when a JA16SJIS client connects to a JA16EUC database, the character shown in Figure 13-21 has the code point value 889F when it is entered from the JA16SJIS client. It is internally converted to Unicode (with code point value 4E9C) and then converted to JA16EUC (code point value B0A1).

Unicode 4.0 Private Use Area

Unicode 4.0 reserves the range E000-F8FF for the Private Use Area (PUA). The PUA is intended for private use character definition by end users or vendors.

User-defined characters can be converted between two Oracle character sets by using Unicode 4.0 PUA as the intermediate form, the same as standard characters.

User-Defined Character Cross-References Between Character Sets

Cross-references between different character sets are required when registering user-defined characters across operating systems. Cross-references ensure that the user-defined characters can be converted correctly across the different character sets.

For example, when registering a user-defined character on both a Japanese Shift-JIS operating system and a Japanese IBM Host operating system, you may want to assign the F040 code point on the Shift-JIS operating system and the 6941 code point on the IBM Host operating system for this character so that Oracle can map this character correctly between the character sets JA16SJIS and JA16DBCS.

User-defined character cross-reference information can be found by viewing the character set definitions using the Oracle Locale Builder. For example, you can determine that both the Shift-JIS UDC value F040 and the IBM Host UDC value 6941 are mapped to the same Unicode PUA value E000.

Guidelines for Creating a New Character Set from an Existing Character Set

By default, the Oracle Locale Builder generates the next available character set ID for you. You can also choose your own character set ID. Use the following format for naming character set definition NLT files:

lx2dddd.nlt

dddd is the 4-digit character set ID in hex.

When you modify a character set, observe the following guidelines:

• Do not remap existing characters.

• All character mappings must be unique.

• New characters should be mapped into the Unicode private use range e000 to f4ff. (Note that the actual Unicode 4.0 private use range is e000-f8ff. However, Oracle reserves f500-f8ff for its own private use.)

• No line in the character set definition file can be longer than 80 characters.

  
  

  Note: When you create a new multibyte character set from an existing character set, use an 8-bit or multibyte character set as the original character set.

  
  

If you derive a new character set from an existing Oracle character set, then Oracle recommends using the following character set naming convention:

<Oracle_character_set_name><organization_name>EXT<version>

For example, if a company such as Sun Microsystems adds user-defined characters to the JA16EUC character set, then the following character set name is appropriate:

JA16EUCSUNWEXT1

The character set name contains the following parts:

• JA16EUC is the character set name defined by Oracle

• SUNW represents the organization name (company stock trading abbreviation for Sun Microsystems)

• EXT specifies that this character set is an extension to the JA16EUC character set

• 1 specifies the version

Example: Creating a New Character Set Definition with the Oracle Locale Builder

This section shows how to create a new character set called MYCHARSET with 10001 for its Character Set ID. The example uses the WE8ISO8859P1 character set and adds 10 Chinese characters.

Figure 13-22 shows the General tab page for MYCHARSET.

Figure 13-22 General Tab Page for MYCHARSET

Description of the illustration csmychar.gif

Click Show Existing Definitions and choose the WE8ISO8859P1 character set from the Existing Definitions dialog box.

The ISO Character Set ID and Base Character Set ID fields are optional. The Base Character Set ID is used for inheriting values so that the properties of the base character set are used as a template. The Character Set ID is automatically generated, but you can override it. The valid range for a user-defined character set ID is 8000 to 8999 or 10000 to 20000.

The ISO Character Set ID field remains blank for user-defined character sets.

Figure 13-23 shows the Type Specification tab page.

Figure 13-23 Type Specification Tab Page

Description of the illustration cstype.gif

The Character Set Category is ASCII_BASED. The BYTE_UNIQUE button is checked.

When you have chosen an existing character set, the fields for the Type Specification tab page should already be set to appropriate values. You should keep these values unless you have a specific reason for changing them. If you need to change the settings, then use the following guidelines:

• FIXED_WIDTH is used to identify character sets whose characters have a uniform length.

• BYTE_UNIQUE means that the single-byte range of code points is distinct from the multibyte range. The code in the first byte indicates whether the character is single-byte or multibyte. An example is JA16EUC.

• DISPLAY identifies character sets that are used only for display on clients and not for storage. Some Arabic, Devanagari, and Hebrew character sets are display character sets.

• SHIFT is used for character sets that require extra shift characters to distinguish between single-byte characters and multibyte characters.

  
  

  See Also: "Variable-width multibyte encoding schemes" for more information about shift-in and shift-out character sets

  
  

Figure 13-24 shows how to add user-defined characters.

Figure 13-24 Importing User-Defined Character Data

Description of the illustration csuser.gif

Open the Character Data Mapping tab page. Highlight the character that you want to add characters after in the character set. In this example, the 0xff local character value is highlighted.

You can add one character at a time or use a text file to import a large number of characters. In this example, a text file is imported. The first column is the local character value. The second column is the Unicode value. The file contains the following character values:

88a2 963f 88a3 54c0 88a4 611b 88a5 6328 88a6 59f6 88a7 9022 88a8 8475 88a9 831c 88aa 7a50 88ab 60aa

Choose File > Import > User-Defined Characters Data.

Figure 13-25 shows that the imported characters are added after 0xff in the character set.

Figure 13-25 New Characters in the Character Set

Description of the illustration csnewchr.gif

Changing the Sort Order for All Characters with the Same Diacritic

This example shows how to change the sort order for characters with diacritics. You can do this by changing the sort for all characters containing a particular diacritic or by changing one character at a time. This example changes the sort of each character with a circumflex (for example, û) to be after the same character containing a tilde.

Verify the current sort order by choosing Tools > Canonical Rules. This opens the Canonical Rules dialog box, shown in Figure 13-30.

Figure 13-30 Canonical Rules Dialog Box

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Figure 13-30 shows how characters are decomposed into their canonical equivalents and their current sorting orders. For example, û is represented as u plus ^.

In the Oracle Locale Builder collation window (shown in Figure 13-26), click the Non-Spacing Characters tab. If you use the Non-Spacing Characters tab page, then changes for diacritics apply to all characters. Figure 13-31 shows the Non-Spacing Characters tab page.

Figure 13-31 Changing the Sort Order for All Characters with the Same Diacritic

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Select the circumflex and click Cut. Click Yes in the Removal Confirmation dialog box. Select the tilde and click Paste. Choose After and Secondary in the Paste Node dialog box and click OK.

Figure 13-32 illustrates the new sort order.

Figure 13-32 The New Sort Order for Characters with the Same Diacritic

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Changing the Sort Order for One Character with a Diacritic

To change the order of a specific character with a diacritic, insert the character directly into the appropriate position. Characters with diacritics do not appear in the Unicode Collation Sequence tab page, so you cannot cut and paste them into the new location.

This example changes the sort order for ä so that it sorts after Z.

Select the Unicode Collation tab. Highlight the character, Z, that you want to put ä next to. Click Add. The Insert New Node dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 13-33.

Figure 13-33 Changing the Sort Order of One Character with a Diacritic

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Choose After and Primary in the Insert New Node dialog box. Enter the Unicode code point value of ä. The code point value is \x00e4. Click OK.

Figure 13-34 shows the resulting sort order.

Figure 13-34 New Sort Order After Changing a Single Character

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