Specifying i18n Requirements

 

Everyone agrees that to compete at the international level, software applications need some level of support for internationalization (i18n). Nevertheless, I have yet to see a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) that clearly defines i18n requirements. Generally speaking, all I find when reading an SRS are oversimplified comments such as "This release needs to support international characters."

In order to guarantee the final product meets the needs of your customers, it's important to specify far more extensive i18n requirements, and answer precise questions such as:

• Must the application be able to accept non-U.S. addresses?
• Do any of the software components (i.e. GUI, installation tools) need to be localized?
• Does the application need to store and transport data using a specific character set?
• Which locales need to be supported?

Different cultures, even within the same country, often use different conventions for formatting numbers and currency, writing the date and time, and delimiting words and phrases. The locale, which specifies the language, country and dialect the system should use to render information, determines the behavior of the following items:

• Rendering and layout of text strings, including writing direction
• Images that are locale specific
• Date and time formats
• Numeric formats
• Currency…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.