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September 2006 - Posts

StrCmp for humans? It's in there!

Igor Levicki asked in the Suggestion Box: Any chance to enlighten as whether Windows Explorer in Windows Vista will learn to sort numeric filenames like us humans do? A.k.a strcmp() for humans Regards, Igor It's like deja vu all over again! no need to Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 30, 2006 10:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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.NET is too busy being consistent with Windows to be consistent with itself....

Back in the early days of the planning for the .NET Framework, everyone was convinced that the CultureInfo class really needed to base itself off of the settings on the underlying version of Windows. People were simply convinced that it would be too confusing Read More...
Posted Friday, September 29, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

If you just don't think you can hold it (64-bit style!)

I can actually say again and again and again and again that although 64-bit keyboards are important to Microsoft and to the GIFT team and how there will be an update at some point that it has not happened just yet.... The truth is that sometimes, some Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 28, 2006 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 41 Comments

When they move everything around and change the signs

From time to time, stores like Fred Meyer will re-arrange where the various things are located within the store. My local store did this just recently, in fact. Now this is an event that I am of two minds on. One the one hand, it is as annoying as crap, Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 28, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments
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'for' handling Unicode? That would be running against 'type'

Tony's question was straightforward enough: I have a CMD file that attempts to read and parse the contents of a text file but fails due to the file being Unicode. Is there any way to get For to process the file as Unicode or do I need to copy the file Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 2:04 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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LOCALE_SABBREVLANGNAME is more than just an ISO-639 code

It was over a year ago that I posted about how LOCALE_SABBREVLANGNAME is so not an ISO-639 code . But perhaps the title of this post covers the situation a little more accurately, or at least a little more clearly.... The rules are simple enough (though Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 27, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

In case you have a yen to extend your keyboard (or at least want a yen?)

It was last week in the post Variation on that theme of wanting more keys covered by MSKLC that I talked about Olivier's non-specific question about adding additional keys to the keyboard with MSKLC. And then yesterday, Olivier gave the specifics in a Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 26, 2006 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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Someone forgot the LCID? :-)

Shell developer Ben Karas has been posting about the property system in the Shell in his new blog The Great Flying Tortoise , and one post in particular caught my eye, the one entitled PROPVARIANT Helpers #6 - PropVariantCompare[Ex] . The function actually Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 26, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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And then came Inuktitut (ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ)

You know that list of languages, the one that keeps getting bigger all of the time? You know, the one with اردو , മലയാളം , Qhichwa Simi , فارسی , isiZulu , ಕನ್ನಡ , नेपाली , Afrikaans , कोंकणी , Setswana , বাংলা , తెలుగు , ਪੰਜਾਬੀ , Lëtzebuergisch , and Read More...
Posted Monday, September 25, 2006 4:56 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

'Cette phrase en français est difficile à traduire en anglais'

When I recently talked about Inaccurate localization can make you bust out laughing , I found myself thinking about one of the very early Metamagical Themas columns in Scientific American written by Douglas R. Hofstadter, where (in a later postcript in Read More...
Posted Monday, September 25, 2006 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Why don't all the half forms sort right?

George asked via the Contacting Me... link: I tried to use the Unicode method of creating half forms in Devanagari on Windows. It worked, but then once I did it the sorting seemed to not work correctly for the half form. What am I doing wrong? George, Read More...
Posted Monday, September 25, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

NTFS and Unicode?

A recent question I received via email from a colleague who preferred to remain anonymous on the blog: Hope everything is going well with you first of all... May I ask for your help on an NTFS technical question? I'm currently involved in some CIFS/NTFS Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 24, 2006 12:40 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

I'm am more sympathetic to *some* situations than to others

You wouldn't think that being involved in software development would mean that one was involved in politics. But then of course it turns out one would often be wrong, in that case. :-) So let me see, situation #1 has to do with the way Windows Activation Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 24, 2006 10:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Intended Implicatures?

I was thinking about Bill Poser's Unintended Implicatures over on Language Log from earlier this month and it occurred to me how often this happens in Microsoft products. I mean, can't almost the entire product lifetime of Microsoft Access and Jet database Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 24, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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The modern solution to the problem of Traditional Spanish in Vista

A while back (well, in March of this year) I was talking about Traditional versus modern sorts , and I mentioned there that I wasn't going to talk about Traditional Spanish then, but that you should stay tuned for a future blog post. Hopeully you were Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 23, 2006 11:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

We have it, we just aren't calling it that in the docs

Aldo Donetti asked me the other day: Hi Michael, I’m sure you’ve seen it [ the new RFC 4646 for language tags/subtags ] already. Do you think it’s going to be implemented soon in Windows/CLR (maybe we already do and I just don’t know…) Ah yes, good old Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 23, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Those letters are stripping off their diacritics in public again, the sluts!

Have you ever noticed how the bigger fan someone seems to be of your blog, the more likely they are to ask a question about something that is actually already covered in some prior blog post? :-) Like that question Charles Bocock asked the other day that Read More...
Posted Friday, September 22, 2006 6:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Inaccurate localization can make you bust out laughing

Remember when I posted (in the beginning of the year) Inaccurate localization can cause problems ? Well, we ran across a not quite as dangerous issue just the other day with the Brazilian Portguese localization of Vista (currently in progress, just as Read More...
Posted Friday, September 22, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Font sizes vary more than one might expect

Regular reader Mike Dimmick commented in response to a post I did yesterday : The Windows CE team decided on Tahoma 9pt as their system font way back in the mists of antiquity, so I'm used to it. And if you want the 'normal' Windows 2000/Office 2000 appearance, Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 6:35 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Aim higher if you are trying to hit Plane 2!

The question that was asked was: I want to show some surrogate pairs’ characters but failed. I have input the code point d801dc01 using MS IME2003 Internal Code method to save as a Unicode encoding txt file and show it in IE. And I also input it in Word. Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 12:49 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The puLLi suppresses the inherent vowel. Or does it?

A few days ago, I said that Tamil is an abugida. It is not an abugi-DOH!, if you know what I mean . In a comment to that post, Sridhar stated : >The concept of the inherent vowel built into the consonant is a definite part of how the script works, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:02 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Variation on that theme of wanting more keys covered by MSKLC

Olivier asks: I have a keyboard that has some extra keys not present in the default keyboard layout presented in the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. Is there a way to add extra key using this tool and be able to generate the layout DLL? Thanks for Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Shrink that font -- automatically?

An email from Chris gave me the most tremendous feeling of deja vu: Obi Wan Kaplanoibi, There must be a way to force Windows to render Tahoma at 8pt whenever it wants to render it at 9pt - systemwide? You're my only hope. Chris Well, I admit to also being Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 20, 2006 7:00 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Put in on my Tab, please

The question that came in just the other day using code like the following: Console.WriteLine("\t\u3094".IndexOf("\t")); // returns 0 Console.WriteLine("\t\u3098".IndexOf("\t")); // returns 0 Console.WriteLine("\t\u3099".IndexOf("\t")); // returns -1 Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 19, 2006 7:41 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Ready... set... Don't Reboot!

(Note the subtle allusions in the title to previous posts like this one and this one ? Allusions. A good sign of quality literature!) Sometimes Vista will tell you that you need to reboot. This is just the way it is, the reboot is a necessary colonic Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 19, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

More on changes to the Hijri calendar?

Some may recall when I have talked about the secular enhancements to the important dates in the Hijri calendar, like in this post . Well, Ihab sent some mail yesterday that showed how some people are taking the idea a lot more seriously than just enhancements. Read More...
Posted Monday, September 18, 2006 7:02 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Remapping the cursor keys in MSKLC?

Maxwell asks: For years now, I have used a program (originally based on someone else's, but with very little of their code any more) to remap the control keys to cursor keys: ^K is the up arrow, ^H is the left arrow, etc., and ^Q sets a toggle so that Read More...
Posted Monday, September 18, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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'I don't understand' vs. 'That is not understandable'

There are a lot of really smart people working for Microsoft. But some of them are some very sheltered really smart people in some parts of Microsoft. (When I say sheltered, I refer here to being sheltered from direct contact with customers -- this sheltered Read More...
Posted Monday, September 18, 2006 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

And we are the knights who say நீ (NII)

I talked before about how Tamil is an abugida . I thought I'd talk for a bit about input methods, since once you know what the language is and now that I have suggested that what the language is should have a bigger role in how it is typed than how the Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 17, 2006 2:07 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 19 Comments

Tamil is an abugida. It is not an abugi-DOH!, if you know what I mean

(apololgies for the Homer Simpson Doh! reference!) The term Abugida , first coined by Peter T. Daniels (co-author of The World's Writing Systems , a book that our team could almost certainly benefit by having its own copy of -- hint hint to people buying Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 17, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

You want to change the time zone? Eto Akta Gamat!

(Bonus geek points for anyone who can identify the language and meaning of the end of the title without searching the web for it!) When you want to change the time zone, you have to have enough permission to do so. And it is more than just having the Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 16, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments
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Unicode INI function; Unicode INI file?

Jake asked me via the Contacting Me... link: I wanted to store my application settings in an .INI file so migration of settings would be easier than the registry allows. I have some Unicode strings to store, but I was not worried since I was using WritePrivateProfileStringW. Read More...
Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 12:11 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

CompareOptions.None means what?

pf.bai asked me via the Contacting Me link: /// <summary>Indicates the default option settings for string comparisons.</summary> CompareInfo.None = 0; ---- I found above message from MSDN about the CompareInfo.None.But I am not sure about Read More...
Posted Friday, September 15, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Not just uppercasing or italicizing; bolding can cause problems too!

Regular readers may recall the following five posts: Sometimes, uppercasing sucks A localizability problem is an application bug, or alternately: Ρύθμιση σήματος If you wanted to get it done with the font... You say ĭtalics, I say ītalics. It is much Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 1:35 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Why doesn't MSKLC have a numeric keypad?

The other day, in response to my Who would win in a fight between VK_DECIMAL and LOCALE_SDECIMAL? post, someone by the [unlikely] name of ReallyEvilCanine asked : Why not include the number pad in the KLC? It would let me change it to a hex keypad for Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 8:40 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments
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Macedonian keyboard updates in Vista

Srgjan asks: Hello Mr Kaplan, I don't know if you remember but I've tried to raise this issue the last time you've made an interview on Channel9. If you don't, I was complaining that under XP the macedonian keyboard layout availible was not mapping some Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 1:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 21 Comments

Michael's Brain?

Lots of you who are regular readers probably don't pay much attention to the text over on the side of the blog, even though it changes from time to time. Like when I added that 'Michael's Brain' pulldown, and included a piece of an MRI image: The text Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:57 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

Who would win in a fight between VK_DECIMAL and LOCALE_SDECIMAL?

What is that old expression about When it's time to railroad... again? The other day, regular reader and MVP Mihai Nita asked in the Suggestion Box: Recently I bumped into something, and I think is a Windows keyboard driver bug. But since when blaming Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 1:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 18 Comments

MSKLC and Vista? MSKLC and 64-bit? Darn, we're 0 for 2....

Remember that MVP I was talking about in this post and this one ? Omi? Well, he reported a few new issues he was running into with MSKLC in a couple of emails yesterday. :-) One of them went like this: Dear Michael, I just installed Windows Vista RC-1 Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 13, 2006 6:52 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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They speak English in other places, too

Charles Bocock asked in the Suggestion Box: How about an article covering the lack of an English version of Windows? Obviously it sounds like I'm making a joke, but one day I hope to wake up, boot my PC and be able to browse my "FavoUrites" and adjust Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 12, 2006 12:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Converting, but not all at once?

So a few weeks ago Doug Cook asked: I've been banging my head aganst this for a while now. Maybe you'll have a clue. I have some text processing utilities that need to be able to read, parse, manipulate, and write text. Right now, they treat everything Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 12, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

WYSINLAWYG (What You See Is No Longer Always What You Get)

One way to look at the issues in You say it 'looks good on paper?' It must not be using ClearType.... is to realize that ClearType represents a reversal in the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) battle that TrueType actually helped Windows win on Read More...
Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 2:53 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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You say it 'looks good on paper?' It must not be using ClearType....

I have posted before on this issue, several times , in fact. And so have many others. But now there are sometimes really compelling reasons in particular situations. Like this one that Jeff Atwood points out . The behavior he is seeing is truly heinous, Read More...
Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments
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How to overclock a child's Language Acquisition skills?

Earlier this year, I remember saying It is amazing how the number of times you need to bite your freaking tongue around parents is directly proportional to how many things you learn about language acquisition! And it is true -- because parents will often Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 1:47 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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Me? I always make sure I rinse it off....

Raymond, in responding to Steve Makofsky's How do you throw out a garbage can? , asks How do you wash soap? Now I remember an old Friends episode where this came up (The One Where Joey Moves Out), right at the beginning of the episode: CHANDLER : Waaa-aaah. Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 1:15 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Sometimes you *want* to interfere with the keyboard's state buffer

Sebastian asked me via the Contact link: Hi Michael, I have come across your (very intersting) blog while searching for information on the WM_DEADCHAR message. I am working on a relatively big/old application which receives deadkey messages but should Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

I want the lines to BREAK, dammit!

Moz asks, in the Suggestion Box: I'm wondering when (if?) MS programs like notepad will start supporting the UTF-16 line and paragraph terminators ($2028 and $2029). It's really annoying that I can't easily view files that include them, especially as Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 11:32 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Further proof that VkKeyScanEx sucks

The question that made its way to me through a bunch of others went something like this (product names removed for obvious reasons): In ######, we use VkKeyScanEx() windows function which can take a Unicode character and return the keystrokes necessary Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 10:00 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

How are the file names encoded?

So, the question that Dixon asked was: Can you tell me how window XP encoding its filename/directory name? Is it already UTF-8? (I assume we are talking about NTFS here) It is definitely not in UTF-8. Furthermore, it is not in UCS-2, since you can have Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 8:53 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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Why bother putting the size in the name if it's not always right?

Yet another fun issue in the '.NET Framework isn't always telling the truth' files.... I was reminded of it by Aldo in the aftermath of that IsSortable() == false? Well, sometimes it may be lying.... post I just did. Try the following code in the .NET Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 06, 2006 12:41 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

'Which is almost the right logic' -- WTF?

Minutes ago, I posted IsSortable() == false? Well, sometimes it may be lying.... and I mildly oversimplified something. I said: But if course you can do it yourself, too (for now) -- you can p/invoke the Win32 NLS API function IsNLSDefinedString any time Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 06, 2006 12:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

IsSortable() == false? Well, sometimes it may be lying....

Have you ever had two different people on your team where each of them came up with a cool feature idea, but the combination of the two ideas did not exactly work as well as it could have? I suppose you can blame someone ine the group who is tasked with Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 06, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Don't quote me on this!

So you take some simple bit of managed code using DateTime.Parse , like the following: using System; public class Test { public static void Main() { DateTime dt1 = DateTime.Parse("3/15/2007"); Console.WriteLine(dt1); DateTime dt2 = DateTime.Parse("'3/15/2007'"); Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 05, 2006 7:08 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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At the TONE, it will not be TUNE, but TANE

I figure that since I initially posted about TUNE in And if your language starts playing a different TUNE that actually mentioned a meeting that would be happening in Tamil Nadu over the weekend that I should post some follow-up information on what happened.... Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 05, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 22 Comments

Kristin takes first prize at the Song Writing Contest

I am basically a lazy person. This is the main reason that I decided not to schlep down to Gig Harbor for the Gig Harbor Folk Festival , even though I knew Kristin Connell would be playing and I wasn't doing anything that I couldn't get out of. I am basically Read More...
Posted Monday, September 04, 2006 9:37 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Every character has a story #24: U+0308 (COMBINING DIAERESIS)

I am reminded of a scene from the 1991 film The Doctor starring William Hurt, modified here to be a bit more linguistic than medical: Linguist : Nancy, are my repeate