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In a recent blog, I did a huge disservice to a colleague, and I wanted to set the record straight. It was back on February 16th, 2005 at 4:55am that I blogged LOCALE_SABBREVLANGNAME is so not an ISO-639 code . And it was over a year later, on September 27, 2006 at 3:01am that I blogged LOCALE_SABBREVLANGNAME...

Previous blogs in this series: part 15: Still no 'I' in EAI.... but we could use an US sometime soon! part 14: It turns out there's no 'I' in IE, either part 13: Desktop and Managed and Metro; oh my! part 12: Emoji + IDN == U+1F4A9 (PILE OF POO) part 11: There's no place like ::1, not...

Matthew Slyman has become quite the Blog commenter recently, giving Yuhong Bao a run for his money! Some of his recent comments from The evolving Story of Locale Support, part 4 (working beyond one's bugs, and the case for an MSKLC update) : @MichaelKaplan: > "The trouble is that it only...

Over in the Suggestion Box, Mike asked: LOGFONT LF_FACESIZE potential buffer overrun? LOGFONT LF_FACESIZE is only 32 characters, but I found a font name (I assume installed by Windows) that was greater than 32 characters: Lucida Sans Typewriter Bold Oblique Sure enough it crashes at least...

The OutputDebugString function has a long history. Though perhaps not such a noble one. Now with most Win32 functions that have string parameters, there is a 'W' version that takes Unicode, and an 'A' version that does not. In a just universe, each would have a purpose. It is unfortunate...

One of the tags I use on some of the blogs in this Sorting it all Out Blog is Linguistic Like all armchair linguists, I have no problem saying something is linguistic, without trying to formally define what I mean when I use the term. It's like porn, in a way. I know it when I see it. You know...

They speak of it quietly, so as to not upset the Canadian standards people. But the plain truth is that we simply don't like this keyboard layout . The Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard (CAN/CSA-Z243.200-92) is the one I mean. I could blame Ian James for it (the SLM logs clearly point...

Dr. Dilan Roshani just sent me a message via the contact link: Subject : Non listed language Thank you for your great blog. I have a rather rare issue using MSKLC to create my custom keyboard. I would like to create a keyboard for Kurdish language but Kurdish in not listed among the predefined...

A couple of days ago, friend and colleague from Microsoft Damit Senanayake put a link up on my Facebook wall (timeline?) written by friend and colleague from Unicode Tex Texin: Tex's Internationalization for Turkish: Dotted and Dotless Letter "I" sells itself short by summarizing itself as a ...

I've talked about Word's "Smart Quotes" many times over the years, in blogs like this one and this one and this one and this one and this one . Oh, and then there's this other one . I like that last one best since Gwyneth from Office gave me that cool table from some version of Word or another...

Short date formats, as a general rule, are pretty consistent. They always have a d or a dd . And not a ddd or a dddd . Which is just another way of saying that we have 6 or 06 , but never Sat or Saturday . They always have an m or mm . And not an mmm or an mmmm . Which is just another way...

When you use SMS/Text capabilities, you have 160 bytes per text. This makes English the smallest language, and every other language a little bit bigger. And it makes some a lotta bit bigger. If you are using supplementary characters, you'll be a lotta bit biggest! Thank goodness I have unlimited...

The question, as usual, was simple: We have a problem. We installed the Turkish Lira update, and since then we are seeing a question mark whenever we should be seeing the new Lira in our application. It looks right in Regional and Language Options. And in Excel. Did we miss a step here? Well...

'Michael, how do I support GB 18030 ?!?' This is a problem that has been played over email messages to me many times since 2005 (when GB18030 was first released). Someone (in this case a developer named Carla) has been given the assignment to support the standard, due to plans to start shipping...

It all started with an innocent question. the innocent questioner asked: Can you point me to any enhancements we are building for Datetime parsing (string + datetime format to a Datetime structure) for Modern C++ apps in the next version of Windows? thanks Our questioner came armed with a dangerous...

Like this bit from Pulp Fiction: "Do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?" "They don't call it a quarter pounder with cheese?" "They have the metric system. they don't know what the *** a quarter pounder is." This change, something that McDonald's knew and Vincent...

My good friend Cathy Wissink sent me email the other day: I assume you know about this, but if not: European Computer Manufacturers Association publishes ECMAScript Internationalization API Specification In December 2012 the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) approved ECMA-402...

Now I wouldn't want anyone's mid year review to be materially impacted by it, but I have to talk about how World-Ready I found my Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows Phone 8 to be.... Let me start by saying when Joe "JoeB" Belfiore and Terry Myerson talked about how Windows Phone 8 was based on a Windows...

The thing about J. Alfred Prufrock and his love song is that he never got around to trying to disturb the universe. Now I didn't want to be as prissy as he was. So, after I blogged the blog in this Blog entitled Developing for a jailbroken Surface RT -- dare I disturb the universe? , some of you...

This was going to be the month. The month to break the six year streak. The streak where every month at least one person sent me email about a particular issue. And then, a few hours ago, Marcus messed that up. His email in part read: My code for dealing with the Japanese calendar has...

T.S Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock once asked " Dare I disturb the universe? " I may have started thinking along those same lines. Perhaps I should explain why I'm asking Do I dare? Do I dare? for those reading along here who aren't in my mind... After reading How to Jailbreak the Microsoft Surface...

Prior parts in these series such as PowerShell ISE will do *everything* (though some assembly may be required!) and PowerShell ISE (or legacy) will do *everything* (and it's really easy to start!" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2013/02/15/10393862.aspx">PowerShell ISE (or legacy) will...

A timely follow-up to PowerShell ISE (or legacy) will do *everything* (and it's really easy to start!) and PowerShell ISE will do *everything* (IF YOU LET IT!) .... After all, in that first blog I talked about Internationalization. And World-Readiness . But all I really went on about was the...

This is going to be a quick follow-up to PowerShell ISE will do *everything* (IF YOU LET IT!) . Someone asked me how to use the PowerShell ISE in Windows 8. Now everything I had done in prior blogs had usually been on Windows 7 or on Server 2008 R2, and I had never even thought about the Windows...

Generally speaking, everyone knows software has bugs. There is one class of bugs that, while important to fix, won't mislead or cause wrong decisions to be made. Like this one that just came in: I noticed the prices of these apps are listed in reverse order in Windows 2012 Arabic LPK. For...