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February 2007 - Posts

What do they mean when they say 'GB18030 Characters' ?

(This could probably get turned into a series with various terms....) A very common question that comes up in internationalization circles is some variation on: How can I get GB18030 characters to test in my application? As questions go, it sounds like Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 28, 2007 1:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Language support is in fact a feature!

Over in the Suggestion Box, Ritesh asked: I do not know wheather it is right place to post my query but i am doing it hoping that u may find it a valid one . Please find my query below: If a font is having Latin script and it consists of languages like Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 2:25 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

They do it with MLang

Cory Nelson asked in the Suggestion Box: I've often seen chat programs and thought "wouldn't it be wonderful if this supported per-language fonts like IE does?" So here my question is: how does IE work this magic? Internet Explorer, going all the way Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

The search for someone who does Search correctly

Thinking about the issues involved with à ≠ a (unless à = a) made me think back to other posts where I mused about possible improvements in the search experience, such as posts like What about search for kids? , to give an example. No one from Google Read More...
Posted Monday, February 26, 2007 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

If the porcine is טְרֵפָה then the fact that the bovine probably is too ought to count for something

(You can probably skip this post, which has nothing technical though it gets positively anal retentive about a technicality!) Over on Lifetime, a Grey's Anatomy re-run from the first season ( Save Me ) was on. In this episode, a Jewish patient does not Read More...
Posted Monday, February 26, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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On the etymology of 'Unicode'

John Cowan's question about Unicode was a deceptively simple one that many people have likely wondered about in the past: What's the etymology of "Unicode"? Does the prefix represent unity or uniformity? It is the sort of thing that of course there were Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:58 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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à ≠ a (unless à = a)

The mail I got read: Hi I'm Laurent Gébeau , FRench MVP on Windows. I met you at the last MVP summit in seattle, and learned a lot about localisations. Since that I love to read you blog , very instructive. I'm actually using Vista on a daily basis, and Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 25, 2007 1:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

Using a character proposal for a 'repertoire fence' extension

If you tune in here to read from time to time, you may recall some previous posts where I talked about repertoire fences, basically situations where one standard or one proposal (in those cases for code pages) was being used to get a better understanding Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 24, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Writing better, faster code

Over on Channel 9 , there is a very cool episode of Behind the Code , this one a conversation with Rico Mariani . I actually got to be in the studio for this one (you can see me in the back in a purple shirt from time to time), which was an interesting Read More...
Posted Friday, February 23, 2007 11:53 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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The MSL8 project? Cool!

Bart mentions over the Suggestion Box: Continuing on the 'Wednesday, October 11, 2006 8:05 AM Michael S. Kaplan Why can't the CP_ACP be UTF-8? ' topic. We are currently looking into making something like unicows.dll. Except that it intercepts calls to Read More...
Posted Friday, February 23, 2007 8:10 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

The failure of 1124

The question to the alias was something like this: Hi I hit a crash because of an argument exception. The text suggests a non-supported culture ID. I look at culture ID table and could not find ID 1124. This is an English W2K3 server with .Net 2.0. Any Read More...
Posted Friday, February 23, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Culture vs. Culture

(The Kramer vs. Kramer allusion doesn't work here really, something about the scansion I think?) You may recall when in two recent posts I wrote about two things that suck about CurrentUICulture. Well, it turns out that the MapPoint Web Services SDK has Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Getting the resource info you want

Developer Eric asked on one of the internal aliases: The following code fragment to query the original filename of notepad.exe will set pValue to “NOTEPAD.EXE.MUI” on Vista. Is this expected? I’m apparently getting the original file name of the language Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

My Comcast picks up SoapNet (finally)

(this post has no technical content and really no point, I am just going to blather about prime time soap operas a bit) So it looks like Comcast where I live finally deigned to pick up SoapNet. So some time over the next six months I'll be able to see Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Here is what's up with localized paths in Vista (and in Windows!)

Some of you may recall the confusion surrounding localized paths in Vista that I mentioned not too long ago. The comments in that post made it clear that lots of folks had opinions about the design and that there was much confusion about how to get the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 21, 2007 12:36 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

If we must be inconsistent, we should endeavor to be consistent about it

The GEO stuff in the .NET Framework is not very consistent. I mean, there is a RegionInfo.GeoId property that will return the same GEOID value as a call to GetLocaleInfo with an LCTYPE value of LOCALE_IGEOID (0x0000005B for those who don''t have the latest Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 21, 2007 1:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Dumb quotes... or maybe they are just smart-ass quotes

(I think I mentioned 'Smart Quotes' previously, in passing ) If I had a dime for every time someone who was having trouble getting the Regional and Language Options unattend setting to work who posted as the command line they were running something like Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 20, 2007 3:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 26 Comments
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Ssang Your Life (or alternately: I'd Like To Teach the World To Ssang)

I spent way too much time vacillating between which song title to use for post's title -- whether the Morrissey cred (and my more than moderately transparent desire to appeal to people who would recognize it) really did outweigh the more obviously wide Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 20, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 20 Comments

Ever wonder why no one bothers to fold digits?

I am pretty sure I have mentioned Chris Walker before on this blog .... Anyway, the other day after that whole conversation about digits happened, he pointed out something interesting: It is interesting to note how little of Vista uses FoldString( ..MAP_FOLDDIGITS) Read More...
Posted Monday, February 19, 2007 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

When Equals ≠ ==

There are two different ways to talk about equality in C# -- one with the Equals method , the other with the operator == . (There is also sometimes a ReferenceEquals method and other times a Compare method one could use looking for a return value of 0, Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 18, 2007 7:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

He had the strength of an OX[IA], I tell you

Remember the other day when I was talking about how the jury giving the string no weight ? Well, it looks like this problem is just going to keep getting worse. Earlier today, Vineet asked: Hello, Could someone tell me how to use Unicode text as a parameter Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:30 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Why I think System.String.IndexOf(Char) sucks

Earlier I posted about Giving a character a new identity (by giving it some secondary weight) . Now that post, while true, only tells part of the story. Now I am going to tell the other part.... Take the following code and you may be able to see where Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 17, 2007 10:27 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Giving a character a new identity (by giving it some secondary weight)

Hatter Jiang asks over on the MSDN Forums: I found a bug when I am programing: when I use like this: "ｱｶｻﾀﾅﾊﾏﾔﾗﾜﾞ".IndexOf("ﾜ") is returns -1,when it should return 9; but "ｱｶｻﾀﾅﾊﾏﾔﾗﾜﾞ".IndexOf('ﾜ') is OK. and belows all worked well: "ｱｶｻﾀﾅﾊﾏﾔﾗﾜ".IndexOf("ﾜ"); Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 17, 2007 2:00 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

The rumor was that SQL Server passwords are case insensitive?

Trevor's question: I heard a rumor that passwords in SQL Server are case insensitive. Is that true? If it is, isn't that a bug? When I read Trevor's question I was reminded of that telephone game where you get to see how much the message changes as it Read More...
Posted Friday, February 16, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The Vista MUI SKU story

So the other day regular reader Mike Dimmick asked me: An article on zdnet's All About Microsoft suggests that MUI packs will only be available on Windows Vista Ultimate and Vista Enterprise. I probably don't need to tell you that a lot of smaller business Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2007 5:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

On distinctions that are primarily with [and without] difference

If you read here regularly, you might remember when I posted If you add enough characters to a sort, intuitive distinction can suffer late last year. A few people have (since that time) reported as a bug the behavior in Vista that I was describing in Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

I don't think it's Sovereignty Day in Montenegro?

You may recall when I mentioned that I all of the holidays in Outlook (ref: On holiday? Outlook might try to tell you where.... ). I have actually been doing this in my Outlook calendar since the very first time I tried to import holidays (Outlook 98? Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Nothing seems to be parsing the crap out of *this* number

Balsu asks: Hi Is there a way to parse the numbers of other digits in C#? After changing the culture to Tamil and Parsing like below didn’t solve the issue int y = Int32.Parse(“௩௲௭௱௮௰௨”, NumberStyles.Number, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.NumberFormat); ௩௲௭௱௮௰௨ Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Quite a [non]character, it is

Mini (no, not that mini!) asks: I am on the ##### ####### ######## team. Hoping you can help me with a question about String.Normalize. We got a few Watson dumps where String.Normalize threw the following exception: System.ArgumentException: Invalid Unicode Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

An opportunity to start down the right [long ]path

I have posted previously in entries like Sometimes what a person really wants is a LACK of size about the issues surrounding MAX_PATH and some of things being done to make the problem better, or at least less worse. :-) Well, the .NET Framework folks, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 1:58 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

What's wrong with the Ukrainian keyboard layout, anyway?

Eugene's question: Hi, Michael. I don`t know is this right place for feature request, but occasion looks too good. Apostrophe is used in Ukrainian language with near the same frequency, as in English. But default Ukrainian keyboard layout don`t support Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 8:56 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

What's wrong with this code?

Ok, another one of those 'what's wrong with this code?' posts, for your coding pleasure.... I won't even say what the code is supposed to do, but it should be fairly obvious what is being attempted (unsuccessfully) here, on several levels: private static Read More...
Posted Monday, February 12, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

MSKLC can't do everything, even in the 1.4 version

(this post might remind you a bit of this other one ) Balabek asks: Hi, I am trying to create a phonetical transliteration from English to Kyrgyz. The Kyrgyz language support exists in Windows XP, but I find the layout quite inconvenient. I have used Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 11, 2007 8:44 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Could you say that again? I am having trouble parsing it...

As a good principle to follow (if not a downright rule), you should always try to match up the methods you use to convert values both into and back out of strings. (I am assuming that matching methods to perform both operations are of course available; Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 10, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

From URI to IRI, in just one version

The question was: Hi All – when I pass dns name in non-english I get this error: Is DNS names in non-english not supported? I passed as DNS name: அம்மா Cannot marshal: Encountered unmappable character. at System.Net.UnsafeNclNativeMethods.SafeNetHandlesXPOrLater.getaddrinfo(String Read More...
Posted Friday, February 09, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

It's not about registering domain names on the slopes of Vesuvius

As the battle for the right subset of Unicode to be allowed in International Domain Names continues, I was struck by an interesting issue. It is all political. Every damn bit of it. You see, there is a huge push to include the Runic Alphabet in the list Read More...
Posted Friday, February 09, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

Language is Politics

Need proof? N3188 kind of proves the point.... Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:55 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

On how to do nothing else but to call it

Mike Akin asked in regard to the ClearKeyboardBuffer routine I had discussed previously in the Getting all you can out of a keyboard layout series: What would i have to do to convert this function so that I don't need to do anything else but call it? Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 08, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Donkey Kong? No, it is just the Meiryō brothers!

So muka posted the following in the Suggestion Box: Not really a topic. Just expressing some frustration. I am a little disappointed about the name of a Vista font. Specifically, "Meiryo". I would have expected the English spelling "Meiryō" with a macron Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 08, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

I do not think that word means what the Platform SDK thinks it means

Looking back at some of the comments to this post , particularly this one and this one , I am actually reminded of one of the very first posts I ever died in this blog, when I gave some keyboarding terms . The two specific terms in question: Supported Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 07, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Info on the new Mongolian keyboard layout?

Regular reader Tom asks: One thing Vista does which nothing else can, as far as I know, is input Traditional Mongolian. There's no info yet on the keyboard layout used for Mongolian (Mongolian) on the Vista Internationalization pages. Anyplace I can find Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 07, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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MLang and GDI and Uniscribe, oh my!

Viktor's question not only captured the problem but it also showed that he had been digging into the problem some: My problem: GDI uses font linking to render CJK characters in a text box or when I call DrawText to output a mixed-script domain name. On Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 06, 2007 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

What are the fonts in Vista?

Bettina asked via the Contact link: Hello Michael, do you have any idea if there is an entire list of system fonts that come with windows vista? I could find some of them, according to the articles, these are apparently not all of them: Calibri, Cambria, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 06, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments
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I'm sorry, but Microsoft does not get time zones

Okay, it's official. We still don't know anything whatsoever about reasonable customer time zone experiences at Microsoft. Now this is the communal we that I am using here, as I take all 76,003 full time employees (exact number may be wrong, but I am Read More...
Posted Monday, February 05, 2007 2:45 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

The myth of consistent user interfaces

There are the lies we tell others, and there are the lies we tell ourselves. And then sometimes there is both, as is the case for user interface guidelines. Now I have talked about all of the inconsistencies here before in posts like this one , and Chris Read More...
Posted Monday, February 05, 2007 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

The sort may not be reproducible

Jeff asks: I just met some problem when using FindFirstFile-FindNextFile: It seems these 2 API think ~ > _ > [a-z] > [0-9] (so _dummy.doc will be returned before ~dummy.doc); while both lstrcmpi and CompareString think _ > ~. So what string Read More...
Posted Monday, February 05, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

So how does that Naqittaut keyboard work, exactly?

The keyboard layout for Inuktitut has a fascinating history on Windows, even though it really only dates back to the post-XP SP2 ELK package in KB897338 that I mentioned here . That first version only provides support for the Latin script. There was a Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 04, 2007 4:07 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

The name of the song is not 'ps-PS I Love You'

(apologies to Sir Paul McCartney for riffing on the B-side to Love Me Do!) I have talked about pseudo locales in passing previously, in Walking off the end of the eighth bit . But I never talked about the names of these little built-on beasties that Shawn Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 04, 2007 4:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

lo lo lo lo lo-LA

Thai support has been in Windows since at least NT 4.0 (though the first version that did a really good job for it was Windows 2000, if you ask me. But Lao (a.k.a. Laotian, a.k.a. ລາວ) did not fare as well. I mean, some collation weights were added so Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 03, 2007 3:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Charlize on the influence of climate (and Guinness) on linguistics

Charlize Theron was on Conan the other night, and she had a few interesting words to say about accents and tricks on picking up accents. The bit of the interview went something like this: Conan : We're back, sitting here with Charlize Theron, and I wanted Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 03, 2007 12:39 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

No CONTROL over the SPACE being filled with CTRL+SPACE

Kevin asks: Oh might guru, might you offer sage advice to a humble servant? I've recently enabled the language bar in Vista so I could enter some Chinese characters to do some intl testing. It worked great, except for one problem - I can't seem to disable Read More...
Posted Friday, February 02, 2007 3:54 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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You can kiss Vista if you want, because it has LIPs, too!

It was nearly a year ago that I did my first post about Language Interface Packs (LIPs), and about two months ago that I did most recent one for Windows XP for ქართული (Georgian) where I voiced the question people had asked me asbout whether LIPs for Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:06 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

Some Port[al] with your dessert?

This post describes a completely true story. :-) It was a few months ago, and I was sitting in a conference room for a presentation. I wasn't giving the presentation, but I was in the group of people who helped to hammer it out. The room was full of exec Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments
 
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