What APIs do I own?

Yesterday, in a comment to my conversation about SHAnsiToUnicode/SHUnicodeToAnsi, Rosyna asked some interesting questions:

This actually brings up an interesting point. If someone working on one group at MS sees a problem in another group's software that affects them, can get just fix the other group's code?

Generally speaking, people would not directly change code in other groups. But you may work with them and provide opinions and expertise and assistance. There is a lot of dogfooding of products that also goes on....

There are exceptions, but by and large its how things that I have seen have worked.

Within a group, people will often work with code that others own to help fix bugs and load balance work -- we are all in a very cooperative environment. :-)

And when you're in a group at MS, how much code is your (individually, one person's) responsibility? An entire DLL? A few functions in a DLL? A lot of DLLs under the same "genre"?

That depends on the dev, on the group, on the complexity, and on the expertise. I can only really answer for me, so I will try to do that right now. :-)

I own the following APIs (and I know people who own more and people who own less):

• CompareStringW
• CompareStringA
• LCMapStringW
• LCMapStringA
• GetNLSVersion
• IsNLSDefinedString
• FoldStringW <--- well, the less cool 2/5 of it
• FoldStringA <--- well, the less cool 2/5 of it
• GetStringTypeA
• GetStringTypeW
• GetStringTypeEx

Plus some that I do not own but kind of de facto own since they are thin wrappers around one of the above functions and their behavior comes off of them 100%, e.g. lstrcmpW, CharUpperW, CharNextW

Plus several new APIs I will talk about after Longhorn Beta 1 and Beta 2 are out:

• ************
• ********************
• ***************
• ***************
• *************
• ***************
• ********************
• ***************

(I may have added in some random extra stars to explicitly foil guessers. Sorry!)

Plus some tools and libraries:

• MSLU (a.k.a. unicows.dll, Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95, 98, and Me Systems)
• MSKLC (Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator)
• *************************

Plus the managed equivalents of the above:

• CompareInfo class and the bulk of the methods/properties in it
• Sortkey class and the bulk of the methods/properties in it
• TextInfo <--- Well, the least interesting small piece of it!

Plus some various infrastructure pieces (e.g. I am the development owner of the Windows keyboard layouts, though it is actually the data PM who is the real owner; I am just the guy who checks them in and gets them into setup).

And I help out now and again with locales and such, though not as much as I used to.

And I am involved with Unicode, sometimes as an alternate rep, other times as just a technical person who participates.....

It's a living.:-)

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