The methods for handling text and language rendering in documents on
a computer have evolved in western countries for several decades. These
methods serve the needs of western character sets quite well, but there
are other countries and users with other language needs. Methods
to handle rendering in different languages have evolved in parallel to
the methods used for western character sets.
Some character sets are much more complex than western character sets,
and different schemes have evolved to handle this complexity in text
entry and display. The International properties exist to facilitate
the use of these special rendering schemes for non-Western languages.