City University of Hong Kong Information on a Course offered by Department of Computer Science with effect from Semester A in 2012 / 2013 Part I Course Title: Chinese Computing Course Code: CS3184 Course Duration: One Semester No. of Credit Units: 3 Level: B3 Medium of Instruction: English Prerequisites: (Course Code and Title) CS2302 Data Structures and Algorithms or CS2303 Data Structures for Media or CS2468 Data Structures and Data Management or CS3334 Data Structures Precursors: (Course Code and Title) (CS3103 Operating Systems or CS3161 Operating System Principles) and (CS3201 Computer Networks or CS3270 Fundamentals of Computer Networks and the Internet) Equivalent Courses: (Course Code and Title) Nil Exclusive Courses: (Course Code and Title) Nil Part II 1. Course Aims: This course aims to provide an overview of issues encountered in a Chinese computing environment. The use of Chinese, multi-lingual features or multibyte character sets in computing become inevitable and there will be impacts in all areas of Information Technology. This course examines the implications of Chinese computing at various levels of a computer system and compares the available technologies. 1
2. Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs) Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to: No. CILOs Priority level 1. identify and inquire various issues, e.g., character encodings, character input, text rendering and information processing such as searching and sorting, encountered in a Chinese computing environment, and more generally, a multilingual computing environment; 1 (core) 2. describe the impact of the above identified issues on computer system design and software internationalization and localization; 3. make critique and assessment on available technologies concerning encoding, input, output and processing of Chinese, and more generally, other writing scripts; 4. design appropriate data-structures and algorithms to solve string manipulation problems under various character encoding formats, the conversion problem between different character encodings, and the mapping problems between characters and other values; 5. design and create systems and application software which are multilingual enabled. 1 (core) 2 (essential) 3 (advanced) 2 (essential) Note on priority levels: 1-highest priority Priority level 1 (core) students must reach an acceptable level on these outcomes in order to pass the course. Priority level 2 (essential) students must reach a sufficient level on these outcomes in order to get a good grade. Priority level 3 (advance) students must reach an adequate level on these outcomes in order to get an excellent grade. 3. Teaching and learning Activities (TLAs) (designed to facilitate students achievement of the CILOs) Teaching pattern: Suggested lecture/tutorial/laboratory mix: 2 hrs. lecture; 1 hr. tutorial. Based on the Course ILOs, the teaching/learning activities of this course may include: Lectures and Resources. All CILOs will be introduced, explained, discussed and demonstrated through lectures. Online resources will be given for out-ofclassroom reading and learning. 2
Tutorials. Tutorial sections are held in terminal rooms, in which concepts, comparison and analysis of various Chinese computing issues that are presented in lectures are demonstrated using software tools and operating systems. Tutorial exercises give students a chance to learn and apply the latest technologies on developing multilingual software and international software. Programming Projects. The individual software project gives students an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to apply knowledge and techniques learned to create practical and workable multilingual software systems, including multi-locale programs and/or multi-locale Web pages. Quiz and. The quiz and examination give a chance for students to reflect on their understanding and levels they can achieve on the intended outcomes. They will provide timely feedback on students learning progress. Correlation between CILOs and TLAs: CILO No. Lectures and Resources Tutorials Programming Projects Quiz and 1 H L L H 2 H H 3 H L L H 4 H L H H 5 H H (L: Low focus on the ILO; H: High focus on the ILO) 4. Assessment Tasks/Activities (designed to assess how well the students achieve the CILOs) Based on the Course ILOs, the assessment criteria, assessment tasks / activities of this course may include: CILO Assessment No. Tasks 1 Quiz 2 Quiz 3 Quiz 4 Quiz, Tutorial exercises, Programming projects, Assessment Criteria Cogently articulate a clear understanding of the input/output/processing issues in written format. Provide accurate and thorough evidence of how various issues are related. Clearly outline the basic ideas of various approaches and also the analytical process to evaluate their effectiveness, including both benefits and drawbacks, and the applications/scenarios that different approaches are most suitable for. Successfully apply the most effective data-structures and algorithms when deriving a solution to the given problem. Articulate a convincing rationale for approaches used in the design. 3
CILO Assessment No. Tasks 5 Tutorial exercises, Programming projects, Assessment Criteria Demonstrate the ability to create comprehensible, user-friendly, well-documented, and well-structured program that is multilingual-enabled. 5. Grading of Student Achievement: Refer to Grading of Courses in the Academic Regulations. Sample weight of course ILOs to assessment tasks: CILO No. Tutorial exercises Projects Quiz Exam Total for course 1 2.5% 7.5% 10% 2 2.5% 7.5% 10% 3 5% 25% 30% 4 5% 5% 30% 40% 5 5% 5% 10% Total 5% 10% 15% 70% 100% Coursework component: 30% - quiz, individual programming projects, and tutorial exercises. component: 70% - duration: 2 hours, at the end of the semester - student must obtain at least 30% from the examination to pass the course - In addition, student must obtain at least 35 out of 100 in the total mark to pass the course Part III Keyword Syllabus: Characteristics, structure and linguistic signs of Chinese Language. Internal code sets, Big-5, GB and Unicode. User interface: input and output of Chinese, printing, display and typeset. Implementation strategies of computing platform: Chinese shells and native Chinese operating systems. Localization and internationalization of software development. Data processing and database systems. Information retrieval, search engines and the World Wide Web. Syllabus 1. Introduction to Chinese computing Syntactic and semantic difference between English and Chinese. Structure. Dialects and romanization. Syllabic 4
2. Internal code sets and standards A survey of different code sets. Single byte character code sets: ASCII, EBCDIC, ISO8859. Double byte character code set: BIG-5, CNS, GB series including GB2312-80, GBK, GB18030. 3 and 4 bytes character code sets: ISO10646 and Unicode. Encoding formats for different character code set: CN- GB, HZ, EUC, ISO-2022, UTF8, UTF16, UTF32, UTF7, Base64 encoding. 3. User interface Comparison of different input methods: keyboard input codes, pen-based input and voice input. Chinese fonts and font technologies. Chinese printing layout and typesetting. 4. Software development Localization and locale. Internationalization. Cultural issues: display, date/time, currency etc. Strategies from major software vendors such as Sun Micro Systems and Microsoft. Programming techniques and guidelines in Internationalization. 5. Chinese data processing and information retrieval Sorting and searching. Indexing and search engines for Chinese Web pages. Chinese word segmentation. Recommended Reading: Text(s): Essential Text Ken Lunde, CJKV Information Processing, 2 nd edition, O'Reilly (2009) Supplementary Reading Tony Graham, Unicode: A Primer, M&T Books (2000) Online Resources: Course web managed by the instructor. 5