The Operating System

Your choice of the version of Windows to use for your application has a significant impact upon the functionality of your application. As always, the most recent operating systems provide the best support; this is especially true in internationalization. A clear distinction exists between Unicode versions of Windows (Windows NT 3.51, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and above) and non-Unicode versions of Windows (Windows 95, 98, and Me); I advise using a Unicode version of Windows, at the very least. The version of the operating system also affects support for mirroring, which is used in right-to-left cultures (such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian [Farsi]), font availability and font functionality, the number of supported cultures (languages and regions), and support for complex scripts (some writing systems such as Thai require considerably more complex support for rendering than comparatively simple Latin languages).