# Section 4:
Binary File Formats

## Introduction

For each culture to which the Required Library may be ported there are three culture-dependent description files.

The description of the cultures will be given as source text in the form specified by the ISO/IEC standards 14651 - International String Ordering - Method for comparing Character Strings and Description of the Common Template Tailorable Ordering and 14652 - Information Technology - Specifications for Cultural Conventions (see section 2).

In addition to the three binary files needed to enable a program to operate in a culture-independent manner, an implementation is required to provide message format descriptor files for classes in the Required Library (see also the specification of the class FMT). Such files must necessarily be in a culture-defined local encoding.

All the binary files have various components which are written to the file preceded by an octet giving the count of following octets (which may, of course, be zero). This is specified in the file format tables in the sub-sections 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 using the term `Sized`(xxx) which shall be read as indicating an object no bigger than 256 octets, the first of which gives the number of following octets in the object's binary string representation. This is particularly used for indicating textual strings of arbitrary size in the target encoding.

Since each file contains many components of different object values, the structure is described in terms of these objects, which in turn may be specified in terms of other objects until at some 'level' actual values are on the file itself.

NOTE

1. Figures in the table columns headed Octets give the count of octets containing the value. Unless a Sather Required Library class name is given in the comments column or the name includes the wording 'bit-pattern' then the entity is normally an unsigned numeric whole number. There is one exception to the unsigned number rule which is indicated by a note to the relevant table.
2. All multiple octet values are stored with the most significant octet first on the file. In general this does not necessarily apply to sized objects which are considered to be in binary string form ready for sizing without any alteration to the binary string.

The file format tables are given in the following sub-sections -

1. Repertoire Map File
2. Ordering Specification File
3. Cultural Descriptor File

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Comments or enquiries should be made to Keith Hopper . Page last modified: Tuesday, 24 October 2000. |