Q: I want to install the Asian version of Windows on a computer with English hardware. Is it possible?
A: Yes. Keyboard input might seem to be a problem since the English keyboard has 101 keys and the Japanese keyboard, for example, typically has 106 keys. The extra keys on the Japanese version are to input DBCS but a combination of the Shirt and Space keys can be substituted on the English keyboard.
Q: I am using English version of Windows and want to display Asian characters. How is it possible?
A: The Windows CD-ROM includes Asian fonts and other necessary software, such as code converters.
Q: I am developing a Java program and I heard that the internal character representation of Java is Unicode. Is that enough for me to declare that my Java program is internationalized?
A: It depends. Some of the things you need to check are:
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The translatable strings are separated from the main code (using java.util.ResourceBundle)
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The locale sensitive functions are realized using JDK's standard locale aware classes such as ones for date/time format, calendar format, text boundary, collation etc
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If File I/O is involved, you must assume that the file outside of Java can not be in Unicode, but in legacy character encodings such as Shift JIS or GB2312. Use the appropriate File I/O classes that can perform the character encoding conversion (like java.io.Reader, java.io.Writer)
Q: My customer has a database which stores data in legacy encoding. What needs to be considered in terms of DBCS when developing an application that accesses this data?
A: Recent applications are typically developed in Unicode, and it is common for customer data to utilize legacy encoding that customers want to keep intact. One of the important considerations in creating database applications is length semantics. The character length in Unicode is counted on a character basis, while the database character data is counted on byte number basis. This discrepancy does not surface until DBCS support is in question. Many ERP applications which originated in the US and European countries often encounter this problem in supporting Asian languages.
Q: According to Microsoft Web site, the Windows code page ID of Chinese in PRC is 936. If my application needs to access code conversion table in IBM products, can I use Unicode conversion table for IBM-936?
A: No. The specification of a code page ID in Windows may not be equivalent to the same code page ID in IBM. Please check the IBM code page specification. | 
