WorldScript

WorldScript was developed by Apple Computer to support the use of foreign languages and character sets in classic Mac OS version 7.1 and later.

Features
WorldScript is comprised of the WorldScript I and II extensions, as well as individual foreign language scripts and keyboards, which are installed into the System file. It is not an application program; it enables multilingual features in existing classic Mac OS applications and regulates how various scripts interact with each other.

History
WorldScript was introduced in 1992 with System 7.1, which was localized into 35 languages: Language Kits were individually available for Arabic & Persian, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Indian, Japanese, and Korean. Updaters were freely provided by Apple to make previously purchased Language Kits compatible with Mac OS 8. In 1998, WorldScript and all available Language Kits became a standard part of Mac OS 8.5, which also introduced support for Unicode through Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging (ATSUI) 1.0. In 1999, Mac OS 8.6 updated ATSUI to version 1.1.

Deprecation
With the transition to Mac OS X, WorldScript was phased out in favor of ATSUI with its Unicode support. However, as ATSUI itself was based on the transitional Carbon API, it too started being phased out in favor of Core Text with the release of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" in October 2007. Core Text was also adopted for the iPad in iPhone OS 3.2 and its successors, iOS and iPadOS. Mark Davis, the co-author of KanjiTalk and WorldScript, is now the co-founder and president of the Unicode Consortium.