| It is a little remarked irony, or rather scandal, of word processing and the Internet that, although the smallest unit of a document is the individual letter or "character", it is impossible to guarantee correct transfer of these units from one language-domain to another. Only unaccented letters, the numerical digits, and a few punctuation marks are unambiguously defined in bits by the quasi-universal ASCII code.
This means that separate software is needed to guarantee an acceptable display for almost every language in the world. An implication is that is usually impossible to find software that will simultaneously display text in a variety of different languages' typefaces.
Localization is the process whereby software packages are made acceptable to markets which use different languages. Besides conversion of the fonts in application programmes, it also involves translation of all the system messages and help files, in application and operating systems. This can have major knock-on effects in the soource code, especially where this has been written with only one interaction language in mind.
Within word processors, the computer can give various linguistic aids to the user. It can check spelling, offer comments on the grammar and style of the text, and look up words and phrases in dictionaries and thesauri.
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