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December 2005 - Posts

Popularity hurts objectivity

I have been fairly critical of both Google's and Microsoft's search engines in the area of searching on many different language and Unicode issues (e.g. the Sorting It All Out to Search Engines post). I personally look forward to the day when I can praise Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 31, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Some thoughts about the Indic keyboard layouts

Last month, Suzanne was talking about The All-India Keyboard and she made several good points related to it usability when compared to some other layouts. She specifically talked about the INSCRIPT keyboards: This keyboard works well for Devanagari, with Read More...
Posted Friday, December 30, 2005 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

More on cursor movement

James Brown asked in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international and microsoft.public.win32.programmer.gdi newsgroups: Suppose I have the following two Arabic codepoints: U+0648 "arabic letter waw" U+0650 "arabic letter kasra" These render as Read More...
Posted Friday, December 30, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 28 Comments

Best practices for keyboards #0: MSKLC warnings in 1.0/1.1

When MSKLC was first developed, it had no validation step, and no warnings. But then as Simon Earnshaw, Cathy Wissink, and I were getting more involved with the process of creating this tool that was going to make it so much easier to create new layouts, Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 29, 2005 6:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

What's a secondary distinction?

It was over a year ago that I talked about how They ask me "why is my Korean text in random order?" It is a pretty important concept in collation to have items collate with muliple levels. What is interesting to about this concept is how it is so hard Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 29, 2005 12:16 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Getting rid of your extra yen

Professor Robert Garfias asked me: I did a search and found your page which comes closest to describing my real life problem. I installed a Microsoft Multi Media keyboard and it found some Japanese language materials somewhere on my computer and then Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

globalization vs. localization (a new answer)

Not sure whether to laugh or cry (or both!): what is Globalization/Localization in Microsoft Framework perspective for building multi-cultural applications? Answer: If u declare a variable locally, it's localization. If you declare it globally, its globalization. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

When the roof got raised, and why

Documentation for API functions can sometimes fall behind and not keep up to the way functions work. I know, that is a huge newsflash for everyone.... :-) Eventually we fix in though. If you look at the Locale Information topic that contains the LCTYPE Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 27, 2005 1:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Administrator vs. Administrateur, et. al.

Yesterday, Ashutosh Galande blogged a bit about the dangers of using the string version of the Administrator account . The reasons that it is a bad idea are numerous, but I thought I might explain a bit more about the particular problem behing bugs like Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

COleDateTime's ParseDateTime and locales....

Some time ago, Mike asked: I need to convert some strings to dates and then use the dates for some calculations. I was looking at COleDateTime::ParseDateTime() and it had the statement - "Note that the locale ID will also affect whether the string format Read More...
Posted Monday, December 26, 2005 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Locale dependencies in the managed debuuger?

Ian Thomas asked in the Suggestion Box: The person who found the problem, and probably one or more who verified it, have probably taken this to the Visual Studio teams (even though it's 2003 - I understand that SPs will be issued from time to time). It's Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 25, 2005 5:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Fictional could make things less functional

I have a list of things that i plan to write about at some point. That list includes ideas of my own, questions in email, items in the suggestion box, things floating around in my head, and posts that are half-written but not yet ready for the blog (and Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 24, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

What Unicode version do you support?

When I was in my mid-20s, I lived in Columbus, Ohio. Living next door to me was a nice couple (Robert and Wendy) who were trying to start a family, and they were really having a tough time with it. (I promise there is a point to this particular recollection!) Read More...
Posted Friday, December 23, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments
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New in Windows Vista: OrdinalIgnoreCase for Win32

I have talked many times in the past about Ordinal and OrdinalIgnoreCase sorting behavior and when you might want to use it (such as here and here and especially here , for example). I went to great lengths to point how the reason that the managed 'OrdinalIgnoreCase' Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 22, 2005 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

We can't win when it comes to those pesky standards, can we?

The title of this post is a little tongue-in-cheek; I do not actually think of standards as pesky in a generic sense like that. :-) But the other day, someone inside Microsoft was having trouble with the XmlSerializer class in the .NET Framework. The Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 22, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments
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New in Windows Vista: updates to clock and calendar

It was almost nine months ago since I pointed out that The WinForms DateTimePicker and MonthCalendar do not support culture settings . And there was also the time I talked about Calendars in other languages . I tried to point out that WinForms was merely Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 21, 2005 11:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 30 Comments

BACKSPACE vs. DELETE

I have often talked about how awesome I think the MSDN Product Feedback Center is. But I do have to admit that sometimes bugs can kind of get lost.... As an example, Ben Monroe sent me the following via the contact link: Greetings. I enjoy reading your Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 21, 2005 1:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Compatible with WHO?

I do tend to go on about compatibility -- the need of software that runs to be compatible with the way it used to run is pretty important. Of course this problem is sometimes even more complicated. The .NET Framework was developed during an interesting Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 20, 2005 4:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

IDN hits the uber-client

A long time ago, a bit before everybody started freaking out about IDN, I posted International Domain Names? The sign on the door says 'Gone Phishing'.... Not long after (when the freaking out began), I posted about how almost no one on the Unicode List Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 20, 2005 9:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

It isn't a FONTSIGNATURE, darn it!

I keep old Platform SDK doc versions around for the NLS API. It does take up some space, but it also lets me look at what used to be in the documentation so I can know where mistaken impressions might have come from. It makes me slower to judge people Read More...
Posted Monday, December 19, 2005 2:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Customizing shaping behvior in Uniscribe

The Uniscribe API set is very powerful, much more powerful than most people need in terms of all the things you can possibly do. To give an example, the other day James Brown asked the following in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.internationla newsgroup: Read More...
Posted Monday, December 19, 2005 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

More on the Unicode 5.0 beta

Last week I mentioned that the Unicode 5.0 beta had started (thanks to Mike G.1 for the link !). I thought it might be nice to look at the coolest summary site of upcomg characters that is available, the Unicode Pipeline Table . Of course, the Pipeline Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 18, 2005 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Customizing the SHORT time format?

Long time reader of this blog Ivan Petrov asked in the Suggestion Box: Hi Michael. From where can I customize the Short Time Format? The Long Time Format can be Customized from Regional and Language Options > Customize (button)=>Customize Regional Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 18, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Sometimes, tech companies cannot take sides

It is easy to have an opinion on an issue. In fact, it is not only easy, it is pretty much an automatic that you will have an opinion on an issue if you understand any part of it (or even worse when you don't!). But big companies have to be careful about Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 17, 2005 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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ELKs aren't roaming where the servers are

(Oh give me a home, where the ELKs all roam, and I'll show you a Windows XP) I have talked previously about the Enabling Language Kits in many posts, such as Lions and tigers and bears ELKs, Oh my! and ELK stampede! (and of course referred to them in Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 17, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Every character has a story #16: U+0084

A few days ago, David Anson (a developer at Microsoft who I swear I saw here on an occasional email as long ago as late 1998? Maybe I am mis-remembering) sent me the following piece of mail: I know you blog on funky Unicode characters, but MSN Search Read More...
Posted Friday, December 16, 2005 2:15 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

More on handling [Unicode] input in the console

Yesterday, I talked a little about handling [Unicode] input in the console , although I did fail to talk about one interesting/important case -- the Input Method Editor (IME). Now not all IMEs seem to work in the console (more likely I just do not know Read More...
Posted Friday, December 16, 2005 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Handling [Unicode] input in the console

It was about seven months ago when I pointed out a method for typing in random Unicode code points using the Unicode IME. And then it was about five months ago that I revisited the issue in typing in random Unicode code points redux . In the latter post, Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 15, 2005 9:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

The bug you wish you'd caught?

Back in September I talked about the article Cathy and I had written entitled Extend Your Code's Global Reach With New Features In The .NET Framework 2.0 . One of the many new globalization features in the .NET Framework that it talked about was "Windows Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 15, 2005 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

My first Channel 9 appearance!

All of those people out there who are under the delusion that I am attractive, intelligent, and/or interesting now have the opportunity to see how wrong they are. Because Robert Scoble interviewed me for Channel 9 . :-) You can check it out right here Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 14, 2005 6:48 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

It may seem like a bug, but it is not....

A user with the amusing handle of IDisposable asked me the following question via the contact link: Title: Am I nuts? Could you check this Ladybug report for me? I think it is bad code, but I'm not versed enough in the String.Compare(x,x,x,x,StringComparison.OrdinalIngoreCase) Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 14, 2005 10:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

We've come a long way, I think

If you were building a sign to list all of the Windows Language Interface Packs , then you should make sure to leave lots of room on the sign. Because we add more and more all the time. The latest is the Maori Language Interface Pack for Windows XP was Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 14, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Unicode 5.0 -- the beta!

This official report went to all of the various distribution lists (sorry, there is still no Unicode RSS feed; the webmaster simply does not believe there is a good reason to move into syndicated feeds.): The next version of the Unicode Standard will Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 13, 2005 8:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Continuity in the subtitles?

The other day, I talked about how a particular scene in the movie Good Morning Vietnam did not look like Vietnamese to me , despite some claims of others to the contrary. The comments then did talk a bit about the apparent variation in the English, French, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 13, 2005 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Ready... set... Reboot Redux

It was way back in February of 2005 in the Ready... set... Reboot! post that I first started talking about the issues surrounding rebooting the OS upon a change of the default system locale. After Rob Mensching's In Defense of Windows Vista's Restart Read More...
Posted Monday, December 12, 2005 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

It does not look like Vietnamese to me

This screenshot is from the movie Good Morning, Vietnam -- the brief period where we are watching Beach Blanket Bingo with what I have seen reported as Vietnamese, and French subtitles in places like this document . But that middle language does not look Read More...
Posted Monday, December 12, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

Why does the percent stuff have so many restrictions?

Between the post entitled And you can't set all of the properties all of the time... and the one entitled More limitations with percentage support , it is somewhat obvious that the percent formatting and parsing support is pretty limited when compared Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 11, 2005 3:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

More limitations with percentage support

I have spoken previously about limitations that affect the support of percent formats in the .NET Framework's globalization classes, in the post entitled And you can't set all of the properties all of the time... I thought I'd talk for a bit about the Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 11, 2005 5:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

We're damned if we do, and damned if we don't

Some time the week before last I was asked via the contact link: Sorry to post a question in this section.. Well it was pretty urgent from my side.. I guess you will be able to help me out.. In our software we have a validation phase in which we validate Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 10, 2005 6:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

CurrentRegion is not based on the GEOID

From the mostly excellent movie Notting Hill: Hugh Grant : Do you say 'No' to everything? Julia Roberts : {thinks for a moment} No. Kind of fun when you argue against a point by playing into it, huh? :-) I was reminded of this the other day. You see, Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 10, 2005 12:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

More on the C4819 error

The other day, Raoul contacted me with the following question: I found your blog doing trying to figure out a warning I'm currently getting in VS2005, and am hoping you might be able to help me out. Sorry to bother you... My company's currently considering Read More...
Posted Friday, December 09, 2005 7:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Perhaps not the best person?

Going back a little more than three and a half years ago, I was asked if I would be interested in becoming a Microsoft MVP again, this time for the MSLU and international support I was doing in the newsgroups. It was not an offer, it was one of those Read More...
Posted Friday, December 09, 2005 6:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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And they sort that list HOW, exactly?

Yesterday, when I was exclaiming that If you can't read it, don't switch to it! I did mention I would talk about the sort order in the language list another day. Welcome to another day. :-) I am going to talk about four different language lists: The user Read More...
Posted Friday, December 09, 2005 10:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

If you can't read it, don't switch to it!

I was reminded of a quote from Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park the other day: Arkady's throat was dry and he took a long drink. "There are not many road signs in Russia, you know." He laughed. "If you don't know where a road goes, you shouldn't be on it." Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 08, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

Some sorts resist the future

(I am not really picking on Japanese here, as there are many similar issues in other languages; this just happens to be one I have numbers for in front of me at this particular moment in time) The sort that has been in Windows for a long time for Japanese Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 07, 2005 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Supporting a pronunciation based sort for East Asian languages...

It has nearly been a year since I asked the question Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese? somewhat rhetorically (since I answered the question!). But since then I have gotten the question a few more times, as people ask how they can Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 07, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Sample usage of the FindNLSString function

(this post is a blatant attempt to overcome writer's block by appealing to my readers!) I have to write some useful examples that show a particular NLS API function in action. You know, so people will know why they should use it, and perhaps also how. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 06, 2005 12:54 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

The lack of Uniscribe samples

A while ago (way back in March of 2005), Ian Treleaven asked in the suggestion box: There seem to be very few, possibly only one sample application showing how to use Uniscribe and its set of APIs. The 1060 page book, Developing International Software Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 06, 2005 11:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments
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Questions about the unit and record separators

Ilya Konstntinov asked in the Suggestion Box: When Complex Text Layout is enabled, TEXT controls get additional new items in the context menu, among which is Insert Unicode Control Character. Among the controls characters, you have something called RS Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 06, 2005 4:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

What's up with the language names?

Late last week, there was a bug in some builds of Vista where one of the language names in Regional and Language Options and the Input Languages dialogs were apparently being duplicated. I was working with my manager to fix a different issue and for a Read More...
Posted Monday, December 05, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Maybe it's a freedom tree?

I remember some time in my pre-teen years having my friend Matthew from Solon proudly talking about the tree that all of his Chanukah presents were being placed under. "A Christmas tree?" I asked, it being one of those years when December 25th and Chanukah Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 04, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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The default character is not always the question mark

It seems like common sense, but every once in a while it is important to remember: Unicode is big . Really big . And not just in a simple Ed Sullivan really big standard sense. Or even in a Morrissey some girls encodings are bigger than other girls encodings Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 03, 2005 6:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Be careful about excessive Microhol consumption

I did now know whether to laugh or cry when I read Bill Poser's post about microhol over on Language Log. As Bill defines it, microhol "...is said to have the effect of rendering anyone who consumes it susceptible to the influence of Microsoft ." Maybe Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 03, 2005 6:00 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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When even the bugs seem cool

Back in the July 2005 post entitled Getting Intermediate Forms , I talked about these middle forms that are not quite Unicode normalization Form C and not quite Form D. By the rules of Unicode it should not matter -- all three have a canonical equivalence, Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 03, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Getting out of dodge (or at least out of the compatibility range!)

The other day, someone in another group in Microsoft asked me: As part of my implementation, I need to map from FExx or FBxx range of Arabic characters back to the base in 0x06xx range. There is a Unicode database text file that I can use (http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt), Read More...
Posted Friday, December 02, 2005 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Calendars in other languages

The other day, Izzy asked in the microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization newsgroup: I want to use a calendar web control that will display a non-gregorian calendar. When setting the CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.Calendar = new Calendar() it works but Read More...
Posted Friday, December 02, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

What language to use

On Language Log , Bill Poser posted about how Icelandic Studies are Shifting to English , quoted in part here: This isn't an entirely unfamiliar development: there are other fields in which foreigners play a major, if not the major, role. Indeed, it is Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 01, 2005 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

What is the VK for the semicolon?

It was just yesterday when someone sent the following question to various people inside of Microsoft: We have a small problem regarding the correct VK representation of the semicolon. Under the standard US KB the virtual key is VK_OEM_1 (0xba) but this Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 01, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
 
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