This chapter demonstrates Internationalization (I18N) and Localization (L14N) of text display through a collection of HelloWorld scenes in many different human languages. It presents a collection of interesting variations on the original HelloWorld.x3d reference scene using many different languages, thus testing foreign-language support by HTML browsers and X3D players. The Hello World scene itself was inspired as a basic test that follows a common pattern, demonstrating the simplest possible way to say "Hello World" in a given programming language. You might know that there are many such programs for many different programming languages. VRML and X3D are both illustrated on the Hello World Wikipedia page as part of several hundred programming languages.

X3D scene models typically use the UTF-8 character encoding which is capable of representing all possible characters used in human languages. Of further interest is Internationalization (I18N) and Localization (L10N) on the Web, which is the use of different languages in documents. Lots of work is ongoing as part of the W3C Internationalization (i18n) Activity. XML provides excellent I18N support for the Web. The X3D Text component allows authors to specify the use of numerous different language encodings, along with corresponding justify field for vertical and horizontal line alignment ("FIRST" "BEGIN" "MIDDLE" "END"), of text directions for horizontal/vertical, leftToRight/right-to-left and topToBottom/bottom-to-top, font family ("SANS" "SERIF" "TYPEWRITER" or other), font style (PLAIN BOLD ITALIC BOLDITALIC), etc. Thus the X3D Graphics International Standard also provides excellent I18N support for any human language on the Web.

Call for contributions! If you are interested in contributing a Hello World scene scene for your country or location, that is great. Please post it to the x3d-public@web3d.org mailing list or else contact us directly. Have fun with X3D!