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CIS 732 Final report User Interface Internationalization Jia Shen
--- CIS732 Final Project ---
User Interface Internationalization
Submitted to: Professor Murray Turoff
Submitted by: Jia Shen
Date: 12/17/2000
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CIS 732 Final report User Interface Internationalization Jia Shen
Table of Content
1. WHY IS “USER INTERFACE INTERNATIONALIZATION"? 3
2. INTERFACE GLOBALIZATION ISSUES AND LEVELS 4
2.1 LANGUAGE 6
3. CULTURE AND DESIGN 7
3.1 WHAT IS CULTURE 73.2 CULTURE META MODELS 73.3 SOME KNOWN AND TESTED CULTURE MODELS 103.4 CULTURE AND METAPHOR 133.5 CULTURE AND ICONS AND SYMBOLS 13
4. SOFTWARE ENGINEERING FOR INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER PRODUCT 14
4.1 INITIATIVE 154.2 REQUIREMENT 154.3 DESIGN 154.4 INTERNATIONAL USABILITY EVALUATION 16
5. GLOBAL WEB SITE 17
6. FUTURE RESEARCH TOPICS 19
7. CONCLUSION 20
8. REFERENCE 20
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1. Why is “User Interface Internationalization"?
The answer is simple: Business Decision.
Ten years ago, user interface internationalization is not quite an issue as it is today. Computer products
made from America were sold all over the world without interface internationalization questions being
asked because there were not many local competitors out there anyway. Or the sales overseas was not
significant at all. Things have changed dramatically in recent years. The graphs below are survey results
of percentage of Internet users by geography:
Internet Users by Geographic Locations (1996 - 1998)
(Source: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/analysis/graphs_charts/)
1996 1997 1998
The yellow areas represent Internet users in North America in all the charts, and it is obvious even by
glance that its percentage is shrinking each year. Internet users from outside North America are
increasing significant as well as rapidly during recent years. The implication is that the demands for
computer hardware and software and other related appliances are also increasing, exponentially.
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Vendors now understand entering a new market takes more than supplying a product that is just
technically superior, aesthetically pleasing, or relatively inexpensive. ([Elisa M. del Galdo, 1996]) Each
culture has its own needs and desires when it comes to products. Only those who address these needs
can compete with local or national vendors and win the market. Computer product user interface
internationalization is not a moral decision, but a business decision.
2. Interface globalization Issues and Levels
The first step in addressing internationalization issues is to make clear what are the issues that are being
involved. Shneiderman [Shneiderman, 1998] says the issues include:
Characters, numerals, special characters and diacritical
Left-to-right versus right-to-left versus vertical input and reading
Date and time formats
Numeric and currency formats
Weights and measures
Telephone numbers and addresses
Names and titles
Social-security, national identification, and passport numbers
Capitalization and punctuation
Tony Fernandes [Fernandes, 1995] lists the following issues as a few:
Nationalism: What is considered an inherent part of a nation or culture and what is consider a
threat to it.
Language: a language and its various dialect
Social context: in many languages of the world, who made a statement has a much bearing as
what the statement was.
Time: Date and time format vary from country to country as well as calendars.
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Currency: symbols used to denote money vary from locale to locale
Units of measure: both the metric system and English units are used in the world
Cultural values: notion of quality, normality, cleanliness and property.
Symbols: food, animals and everyday objects can has symbolic meanings that may convey
unintended messages.
Esthetics: use of color, patterns, shapes and textures.
Below I am categorizing these issues into four categories with three levels of objectives. The following
table lists them from surface to bottom level.
Internationalization Issues and levels
Objectivity
Levels
Internationalization
Issues
Example Current Research
Examples
Comprehensibility
Usability
Desirability
Language Product language
localization
Unicode;
Machine Translation;
Microsoft knowledge base
for common computer word
translation
Institutional matters Time zone, date format,
currency, measurement
Environmental
factors
Esthetics, Icons and
symbols
ISO symbols for interface;
Microsoft knowledge base
for international color use
Social conventions Forms and values. Culture model
As Del Galdo and Nielsen [Elisa Del Galdo and Jakob Nielsen, 1996] described, the three levels are:
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1. Comprehensibility: A computer interface that is capable of displaying the user's native language,
character set, and notations, such as currency symbols.
2. Usability: A computer interface that is understandable and usable in the user's native language.
3. Desirability: A system that is able to produce systems that accommodate users' cultural
characteristics.
Companies have started to recognize the need to address issues on the first two levels. Issues such as
language translation or date and currency format have been considered in some products. Current
research work is concentrating on automatic machine translation, using Unicode for programming [David
A. Schmitt, 2000], or establishing knowledge base for product internationalization, such as Microsoft
Developer's network which includes a database for common computer word translation. Further research
is needed in understanding the deeper level of culture issues and their influence on computer product
desirability. Let's first briefly discuss the issue of language, then the next part is devoted to discussion on
culture and design.
2.1 Language
In the past, people dealt with computer were assumed to know English. Products rarely needed to be
translated. Nowadays, with the proliferation of computer all over the world, people with all ages and
culture background started to use computer. The assumption is no more valid.
Language is usually the first issue we encounter in product internationalization. Programming languages
are designed that better support making international software easily. Languages such as Java, Visual
C++, Visual Basic all have supporting features, such as character coding, and operating systems such
as Windows are adding functions to better support internationalization.
Besides translation, there are some other issues in this area such as language ambiguity. Trash can in
the United States is called waste basket in Great Britain and rubbish in New Zealand.
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A billion means a thousand million in the US whereas in Great Britain it means a million. So language
internationalization should also deals with these issues.
3. Culture and design
There is no denying that culture influences human-computer interaction. The task is how to study culture
effectively to address the needs of users worldwide in computer product design and implementation. To
do this, let us first look at what is culture, its layers of issues that could possibly influence product design,
and then some well known culture models and their impact on computer product.
3.1 What is Culture
Our working definition for this article is: culture is learned behavior consisting of thoughts, feelings, and
actions. [Hoft, 1996] There is no agreement to a specific definition of culture. In 1954, for example, A. L.
Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn reported over 300 definition of culture (Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts
and Definitions, New York: Random Hourse). The definition used here is simple and seems to be in
agreement with much research on culture.
3.2 Culture Meta models
A culture model helps to identify levels of issues being involved in this complex problem by using
international variables, or dimensions of culture. International variables are categories that organize
cultural data. [Hoft, 1996]
Before we study any specific cultural models, let's look at cultural meta models that help us to
understand how and where culture comes to influence our lives in a profound way. There are four meta
modals of culture that were reviewed in [Hoft, 1996], which are
Objective and Subjective culture
The Iceberg Model
The Pyramid Model
The Onion Model
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Overall these models are all telling us one thing: culture has multiple layers and what we can normally
observe is only the most external layer which counts for about 10% of its total influence. There is much
more profound influence of which we may not even be aware. The Iceberg Model and the pyramid model
are most helpful to illustrate this point.
1. The Iceberg Model:
The Iceberg model is a popular metamodel that is often used in cross-cultural research. Below is the
graph that shows the models.
The Iceberg model
The analogy drawn in the Iceberg model is that just as 10 percent of an iceberg is visible above the
surface of the water, only 10 percent of the cultural characteristics of a target audience is easily visible to
an observer (us). It follows that just as the remaining 90 percent of our cultural characteristics are hidden
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from view and are therefore easier to ignore and more difficult to identify and study. The model identifies
three metaphorical layers of culture:
Surface: visible, obvious rules such as number, currency, time and date formats.
Unspoken rules: obscured, need context of situation to understand the rules
Unconscious rules: rules out of conscious awareness and difficult to study.
2. The Pyramid Model
Another model that is well known was developed by Geert Hofstede was called the pyramid model.
The Pyramid Model
Geert Hofstede introduces three layers of culture in Pyramid model.
Personality: specific to a person and is learned and inherited
Culture: specific to a group or category of people. It is learned not inherited.
Human Nature: common to all human beings. It is universal and is inherited, not learned.
These meta models provide us with a sense of which layer of culture we would like to look at to test
international computer products.
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3.3 Some known and tested culture models
The purpose of reviewing some known and tested culture models is to provide what has been known in
this area. They may serve as starting point to develop your own culture model for your needs. These
models are based on questionnaires, surveys, extensive interviews, focus groups, and years of
experience and observation.
Four well known models of culture
Author Focus of Culture Variables identified
Edward T. Hall Determining what releases the right
response rather than what sends
the right message
Speed of messages
High context/ low context
Space
Polychronic/Monochromic Time
Information flow
Action chains
David A. Victor Determining the aspects of culture
most likely to affect communication
specifically in a business setting
Language: fluency /accents etc.
Environment and Technology
Social organization
Context
Authority conception
Nonverbal behavior
Temporal conception
Geert Hofstede Determining the patterns of
thinking, feeling, and acting that
form a culture's mental
programming
Power Distance
Collectivism vs. Individualism
Femininity vs. Masculinity
Uncertainty Avoidance
Long-term vs. Short-term
Fons Trompenaars Determining the way in which a Universalism vs. Particularism
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group of people solves problems
Collectivism vs. Individualism
Specific vs. Diffuse
Achievement vs. Ascription
Attitude to time
Attitude to environment
The international variables being identified in these models tell us how different people from different
culture are. Current computer products are not sophisticated to support cultural diversity to this degree,
and thus not achieving the "desirability" level in our hierarchy. Some of the variables are directly related
to observations done by some study in comparing Japanese and American computer users. Below I am
summarizing a few interesting examples given in [Masao Ito and Kumiyo Nakakoji, 1996]
When difficulty is encountered in using a system, whom to blame: users or designers?
Japanese tend to conclude it's their fault for not reading manuals carefully before hand.
Americans tend to blame the system and its designers for not being considerate.
Learning style:
Japanese: read manuals first very carefully before start using a system.
Americans: immediately start using a system to see "what will happen"
Sequence of operations:
Japanese: first identify the object, then the action on the object, such as (file; delete). This is said to
stem from Japanese grammar, which is subject followed by object followed by verb
Americans: accustomed to first specify the action, then the object as English grammar is: Subject +
Verb + Object
Thus Japanese users find the sequence of a typical GUI operation (e.g. first select an object then specify
an action) more natural than American users.
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Group collaboration
Japanese: parental management style, stress on teamwork, not individual contribution. Harmonious
meeting.
Americans: Consultative management style, appreciate individualism, encourage different ideas
Reading habit:
Japanese: Last sentence is always topic sentence.
Westerners: Topic sentence can be found in each paragraph in English.
Another interesting observation is that it has been said that Japanese use face marks (emoticon) in on
line communication much more than westerns. The reasons are twofold: Japanese, like Chinese, are
used to look at pictograms, and second, Japanese tend to use facial expression and context to judge
another person’s meaning. Saying everything up front is considered to be impolite. Using Edward T.
Hall's culture model, Japanese is a high context culture where the context of conversation carries as
much weight in the communication as the message itself, if not more; whereas countries such as
German are low context and thus things are expected to be articulated clearly. But instead of using
emoticons, such as , Japanese prefer to invent their own symbols: (^-^) for happiness. They also
invented their own such as (^o^;>) for Excuse me. The triangular shape on the right apparently
represents a protruding elbow and stems from the fact that an embarrassed or apologetic person will
sometimes scratch the back of his or her head.
As we can see, culture model is effective in studying culture in a meaningful way for the purpose of
computer product design and implementation. One has to develop his own culture model to
accommodate his own needs. To this end, he must determine the layer of culture issue that he wants to
study, and develop his model and then collect data to test the model. The goal for any culture model is to
understand the difference in culture and thus base the design on the culture.
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3.4 Culture and metaphor
Many computer interfaces adopt real world objects to help users understand the task and the system.
Unfortunately the world is usually American real world. Though the idea is valid, users' real worlds vary
from place to place yet user interfaces don't. [Tony Fernandes, 1995]
An interesting example is given in [Masao Ito and Kumiyo Nakakoji, 1996] where typewriter is being used
as metaphor for word processing software in western world. Concepts and notions such as tab-stops
and margins have been well known and naturally understood by those who have experience using real
typewriter. However, it was not the case in Japan, where Japanese and Chinese character sets are
being used and typewriters were rarely encountered in daily life except for professionals and English-
major students. In Japan, they typically use rule-lined writing pads with 20*20 grids and one character
was written in for each grid from top to bottom and right to left. Given these differences, an appropriate
metaphor for Japanese word processing without influcence of American software would be ruled writing-
pad. But Japanese still use the western typewriter metaphor because they got accustomed to it and
changes to other metaphors may see awkward. So this is a case of "acclimatization" overwrites culture
difference.
3.5 Culture and icons and symbols
As the saying goes, "a good picture worth a thousand words." Most of today's software use icons and
symbols to communicate with users. Icons are signs that are familiar, concrete representations of objects
or people. Symbols are more abstract and require specific instructions to learn. For international
computer interface, the design of icons and symbols pose great challenge. Similar to metaphors, the
problem here is what is meaningful and natural to one group may be ambiguous, unintelligible, or
arbitrary to anther. [Aaron Marcus, 1996] Some well known examples include the design of Windows
folder icon, garbage cans, and mailbox. The typical Windows folder icon looks like this:
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Though the yellowish color and the tab suggest to western users that apparently it is a file folder that
they use everyday, it is rarely seen in some other countries, China for example. The folder used in China
is usually a rectangular one made from thick brown paper without tabs. So for Chinese users, they are
forced to associate this unfamiliar object to folders and remember this association. It is definitely extra
work which should not be the intention of using icons and symbols.
There are other issues that are associated with culture and interface design such as culture and color,
culture and computer mediated communication, culture and groupware etc. As a complicated topic, the
current study of culture for product design is far from fully-fledged. But there are companies who realized
its importance and carried out research in this field. Hewlett-Packard once conducted contextual
research for their Inkjet printer to enter international users' families. [Susan Dray and Deborah Mrazek,
1996] Though based on limited time and budget the study was carried out only in four America cities and
two European cities with 20 families, the results were extraordinarily valuable for HP to see how their
products were actually being used in their families. The data collected played a significant role later in
the product design. The idea is a thorough study of people and an understanding of their cultural
background is a prerequisite for a successful international product.
4. Software Engineering for International Computer Product
Interface design issue is part of computer product design and thus to do things right, a proper method
needs to be proposed to incorporate internalization elements into the processes of software
development cycle.
4.1 Initiative
The first step is to understand why you need to do internationalization. Don't customize for the sake of
customize. As pointed out at the beginning of this report, this is a business decision rather than anything
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else. So do market research and data analysis and decide whether customers from other parts of the
world are making significant profits for your company, or have a great potential. In most cases the
answer is yes. As Jakob Nielsen said, the age for internationalization has arrived (since 1998). [Jakob
Nielsen, 1998]
4.2 Requirement
Understand the target culture and develop a culture model of your own.
To get requirement from international market is not an easy task. Before you start out you should have
culture model of your own with international variables that are the dimensions that of most interest to
you. Say in your product you want to know whether people from different culture have different
expectations for response time and information richness. Then in your model response time and
information richness are two variables to measure. After this, you will collect data based on your
resource limits. Then you need to determine whether the differences are significant enough for you to
customize product for different culture. If the answers are positive put them down in your requirement
specs because in the next step designer needs to take them into consideration. In the Microsoft
development example[15], things such as leave extra space in menu table or pop up dialog boxes since
translation into other languages may take more space is not a afterthought. They need to be
documented before design starts.
4.3 Design
The design process is an iterative one which goes back and forth between design, testing and then
redesign and testing. This is because there is never enough design guidelines that you can follow to
make sure the design is internationally acceptable. You have to test with real people from diverse
cultures. Based on the test results, you probably need to modify the design. Radical things should be
found and done early in the process to eliminate overhead. Another point is to have an international
design team, which by itself may represent user diversity.
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Technically there are already rules for designing international products such as put your application logic
and interface contents, such as menu choices and warning pop up Windows notice message separately.
By laying out a good architecture, later you may be able to easily customize your product such as
translation. Coding scheme for character set also needs to be specified. Also state what international
standards you will use, if any, for your product, such as ISO standard symbols etc.
4.4 International Usability Evaluation
Like mentioned earlier, there are two steps in ensuring the usability of interface: follow guidelines and
doing testing. Following guidelines alone normally doesn't do the work because they can not be
comprehensive, so you need evaluation. Jakob Nielsen did detailed work in explaining how to conduct
international usability evaluation. Basically there are two approaches: [Jakob Nielsen, 1996]
International usability inspection: Simply have people from multiple countries look over the user
interface any analyze whether they think it would cause any problems.
International usability testing: Use real users of the system to do real task without getting any
help.
International usability inspection results in "educated guesses" as no real tasks are being involved.
Preferably local usability specialists should be hired as users. They may point out major design issues
such as people don't do things that way in that country. So this should be carried out early in the cycle.
International usability testing, on the other hand, result in detailed real data as you are using real people
and real task. There are several ways to do testing:
Go to the foreign country yourself
Run the test remotely
Hire a local usability consultant to run the rest for you
Have staff from local branch office run the test, even though they are not trained in usability
Have the users perform a self-administered test without supervision.
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Given resource limits, sometimes only small-scale tests are feasible. But the key point is that to do
something is much better than doing nothing at all. In terms of international usability testing, even limited
data can help significantly in entering into a new market.
5. Global Web site
Back to the survey we mentioned at the beginning of this report, there is a growing number of users on
the Web that are not from North America. Make web sites international is a challenging as well as a
rewarding task. Jakob Nielsen predicted that the year of 1998 was the year that international web site
was going to happen as a major trend, and he said it turned out to true. That's why I make it a special
topic in this report.
Basically there are two ways to make global sites: internationalize and localize. Internationalize means
one sites accommodate all users, localize means customize sites for different locations. Jakob Nielsen
offered lots of practical advice in terms of building sites for international use [Jakob Nielsen, 1999]. For
example:
Log files of your site can be used to see geographical distribution of user groups and thus facilitate
decision on whether a translated site is necessary.
If you are making multi-language choices on a staging page, make your choices stand out.
Use text for language choices, not just national flags as it may be ambiguous and not appropriate.
Date format used on the web should take different time zones into consideration. For example: The
press conference starts 1:00 p.m. In New York (GMT - 5), corresponding to 19:00 in Paris and 3:00
the next day in Tokyo.
Let's use Yahoo as an example. The main site (http://www.yahoo.com) offers a list of regional sites called
"Local Yahoo!s" on the purpose to serve people more effectively based on their region. Yet the choices
are listed at the bottom of the major yahoo.com site, which is not a very obvious choice to users. What
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caught my eyes were the two links that are both related to China, namely "China" and "Chinese". Only
after some extra clicks did I find out that the "China" site is for China mainland, while "Chinese" is for
Chinese people overseas. The charters on China site is simplified Chinese, while on the Chinese site it
is traditional Chinese. Also there are features that serve local audience.
Yahoo! China Site
The Yahoo! China site serves Chinese people live in Mainland China. Features include:
Use simplified Chinese
English-Chinese dictionary
Chinese Astrology
Local news
Yahoo Chinese
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Chinese Astrology
English- Chinese Dictionary
China Local News
CIS 732 Final report User Interface Internationalization Jia Shen
The Yahoo! Chinese site aims at serving Chinese people living in North America. Features include:
Use traditional Chinese. (The most popular character set used among Chinese in North America)
News include those happened in both North America and China.
Canada and American map
6. Future research topics
It's always easier said to be done. For a developer or manager planning international software
development, the issue is how to write programs for more than one language easily. In industry, Unicode
has been proposed and programming languages such as Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Sun's
Java are adding features to make development of international software easier. Future researches need
to be done in:
Machine Translation
Establishing effective culture model
Get International requirement
Incorporate internationalization into software development cycle
Effective icons and symbols design for international use
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Canada/US Map
Chinese Medicine in North America
US News related to China
CIS 732 Final report User Interface Internationalization Jia Shen
A knowledge base for international standards on global interface design
7. Conclusion
The age for computer product internationalization has arrived. This is a complex issue that can result in
different levels of satisfaction. Currently vendors have realized its importance, but their efforts are mainly
focused on language localization. Culture issues need to be studied in an extensive way to result in
better internationally satisfactory products.
The bottom line is that it's better to do something than do nothing. And the effort may make a big
difference in your computer product, internationally speaking.
8. Reference
Books:
Reference [1]-[7] are from International User Interfaces, edited by Elisa M. del Galdo and Jakob
Nielsen, Wiley Computer Publishing, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1996, ISBN: 0-471-14965-9
[1]. Jakob Nielsen, International Usability Engineering
[2]. John Connolly, Problems in Designing the User Interface for Systems Supporting International Human-Human Communication
[3]. Nancy Hoft, Developing a Culture Model
[4]. Elisa M. del Galdo, Culture and Design
[5]. Masao Ito and Kumiyo Nakakoji, Impact of Culture on User Interface Design
[6]. Susan Dray and Deborah Mrazek, A Day in the Life: Studying Context across Cultures
[7]. Aaron Marcus, Icon and Symbol Design Issues for Graphical User Interfaces
[8]. Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability: The practice of simplicity, New Riders Publishing, 1999, ISBN: 1-56205-810-X
[9]. Virginia Howlett, Visual interface design for Windows, Wiley Computer Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1996 ISBN:0-471-13419-8
[10]. Ben Shneiderman, Designing the User Interface, Third edition, Addison Wesley Inc., 1998, ISBN: 0-201-69497-2
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[11]. David A. Schmitt, International Programming for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Press, April 2000, ISBN 1-57231-956-9
Papers and Proceedings:
[12]. Tony Fernandes, Global user interface design, CHI 1995 MOSAIC of creativity – May 7-11, 1995, Pages 363-364
[13]. P. Russo and S. Boor, How fluent is your interface? Designing for international users. Human Factors in Computing Systems, INTERCHI'93 Conference Proceedings, ACM, 1993, 342-347
[14]. W. A. Kellogg and J.C. Thomas, Cross-cultural perspective on human-computer interaction: A report on the CHI'92 workshop. SIGCHI bulletin 25, 1993, 2:40-45
Online references:
[15]. Localization: Done right, it's part of the spec, not an afterthought. Microsoft Corporation. 1999. http://www.microsoft.com/misc/backstage/column_3.htm
[16]. Survey resources are from NUA.com at http://www.nua.com
[17]. Japanese Emoticon: http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0812smile.html
[18]. Blissymbolics: http://home.istar.ca/~bci/intro.htm
[19]. Jakob Nielsen, International Web Usability, Alertbox for August 1996, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9608.html
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