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April 2002

 

Jack's Hack for the month of April, 2002:

Using International Character sets with the Openwave Mobile Browser

This month in Jack's Hack we will explore developing, testing, and deploying WML applications localized into both European and Asian languages and character sets. We'll take a look at how to properly configure your web server, the Openwave SDK, and your WML content, and touch on the finer points of Character Sets, Accept Languages and font settings.

For past issues of Jack's Hacks, check out Jack's Archives

The Openwave Mobile Browser, in conjunction with the Openwave Mobile Access Gateway use existing web standards for handling languages other than English. The Openwave SDK and Openwave browsers are capable of displaying a wide range of international character sets. There are several pieces to the puzzle of delivering non-ASCII characters to a WAP enabled device:

1. The accept language (http-accept-language) of a device
2. The accept character set (http-accept-charset) of a device
3. The font on a device
4. The character set of the content being delivered

• Configuring your web server
  
  MIME extensions are added to the web server so that it can correctly identify the characters set of wml content sent to a phone. In order for this to take place the server must communicate with the wml browser installed in the phone and indicate that it is wml content that will be received by the browser and not HTML
  
  To display a Western European Language such as French you need to follow a few basic steps:
  
  Below is a description of how to configure Microsoft Internet Information Server and Apache Web Server to deliver French WML content.
  
  
• Configuring the Microsoft IIS web server
  
  
  1. Open the Internet Service Manager Tool
  2. To add a new MIME type for a specific directory, right click the desired directory and select properties.
  3. Select the HTTP headers tab.
  4. Click on the file types button.
  5. Select new type and add the following values:
     Associated Extension: .wml
     Conent type (MIME): text/vnd.wap.wml;charset=iso-8859-1
  6. Click OK.
  7. Reboot your system.
  
  
• Configuring the Apache web server
  
  For versions of Apache that are older than the 1.3.4 version you should do the following.
  
  
  1. Edit the mime.types file.
  2. Add the following
     text/vnd.wap.wml;charset=iso-8859-1 wml



• Delivering Dynamic content
  
  The steps above will suffice if you are delivering static wml pages. However, if you are building an application that delivers dynamic content, you will need to specify the character set when you declare the content type.
  If you application uses ASP, include the following:
  <Response.ContentType = "text/vnd.wap.wml;chaset=iso-8859-1">
  
  If you are using ColdFusion, include the following:
  <CFCONTENT TYPE="text/vnd.wap.wml;charset=iso-8859-1">
  
  
• Configuring the Openwave Simulator


Below is a description of the steps you should follow to configure your Openwave Simulator for French content.


1. Load the Simulator.
2. Select Settings, then Device Settings.
3. Select French from the Language menu option.
4. Select Western European char set.
5. Select Western font.


Once you have done this, you can verify the settings that you have just made by visiting the "Who Am I" script that ships in the sample code with the Openwave SDK. This particular script can also be found from the home deck for the Openwave SDK by selecting WML Samples -> Example Apps -> Who Am I? If you choose the HTTP option, you will see the following (provide you are properly configured)



In addition to configuring your web server to include the character set in the content-type header, you should also specify the character set in the first line WML file as below:



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN"
"http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">

<wml> 
   <card>
     <p>
      jamais confiante en elle-même
      et déterminée à s'épanouir
    </p>
   </card>
</wml>

The screen shot below shows the WML deck above rendered on the Openwave Simulator



Please note that the Openwave Mobile Access Gateway requires the character set to be specified in order to perform the correct encoding. There are however some differences which WAP developers should be aware of with regard to how International content is handled by the major WAP gateways.

• Displaying Korean Content using the Openwave Simulator
  
  The Openwave Simulator and Openwave Mobile Access Gateway support a variety of character sets for displaying Chinese content, Japanese content and Korean content.
  
  To display Korean content use the KS_C_5601-198 character set and follow the procedure for displaying French content as outlined in the previous section.
  
  Remember you must configure your web server to serve Korean content, e.g. if you are using Apache, add the following to the mime.types file and restart the server
  
  text/vnd.wap.wml;charset=KS_C_5601-198    wml
  
  Then follow the instructions below:
  
  
  1. Select Uplink mode in the simulator.
  2. Set the Language and Charset properties of the Openwave Simulator.
  3. Select Korean from the Language menu option.
  4. Select KS_C_5601-198 charset.
  5. Select Gulim font, and Hangul script.
  6. Finally, Add the following line of code to the xml header of your wml file:

     <?xml version 1.0 encoding = "KS_C_5601-198"?>
     
     <?xml version="1.0"  encoding="KS_C_5601-198"?>
     <!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN"
     "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">
     <wml>
      <card>
       <p>
       
       </p>
       </card>
     </wml>
     

  
  Below is an example of Korean content displayed on the Openwave Simulator.
  
  
  
  
• Displaying Chinese content using Openwave Simulator
  
  The supported Chinese character sets include:
  Big5 - used for traditional characters (Taiwan and Hong Kong).
  GB - (Guobiao) used for simplified characters (Mainland China).
  
  Then follow the instructions below:
  
  
  1. Set the Language and Charset properties of the Openwave Simulator.
  2. Select Chinese from the Language menu option.
  3. Select Big5 charset.
  4. Select PMingLiu.
  5. Finally, Add the following line of code to the xml header of your wml file:

     <?xml version 1.0 encoding = "Big5"?>

• Displaying Japanese content using Openwave Simulator
  
  If you are running Win95-J or WinNT-J, set charset to Japanese(Shift-Jis).
  If you are running U.S. Windows NT, choose Automatic from the Charset dropdown menu.
  
  Please note: you cannot configure the Openwave Simulator for Japanese if you are using U.S. Windows 95/98. Also, you cannot use the Shift-JIS character set with any version of Window other than the Japanese versions shown above.