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August 2007 - Posts

Elegant? Beyond compare...

Sometimes I wonder if the posts I write are not clear. The good thing about the blog is that it is a lot like me talking to people. Of course the bad thing about the blog is that it is a lot like me talking to people.... I was thinking about this when Read More...
Posted Friday, August 31, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

The main criteria in determing whether a code page sucks? Suckage, of course!

Rasqual asks: Hello Michael, I'll keep the question short: What makes a 'good' encoding, and what makes it broken? When I think back to the various code pages that I have considered to be broken in one way or another: 22/01/2005 Not all code pages work Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 30, 2007 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

When it is harder to fit your calendar into things than things into your calendar

Support Engineer Scott Heim had a question he asked yesterday: Hi all, I have the MonthCalendar control on a form and when this is displayed in XP, the calendar displays correctly; however, on Vista machines the calendar appears larger and the “Saturday” Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 30, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Are you Mr. Kaplan?

Those were the exact words of the person on the phone, those words in the title. I should back up a minute. I have a land line phone with Verizon that I only use for emergencies like that recent power outage and also to torture telemarketers (I am not Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2007 1:05 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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If the data is invalid, the results can be invalid too

They say that a good lawyer never asks a question in court without already knowing the answer. Well, I'd probably make a lousy lawyer. Because when I was doing the research for What's up with MB_ERR_INVALID_CHARS? , I did not know the full extent of the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Sometimes a request is made of me and the question is asked in such a way that I just don't know exactly how to respond

You know the drill, nothing technical.... Sometimes a request is made of me and the question is asked in such a way that I just don't know exactly how to respond.... Like when I got home today and my neighbor (who was outside in the porch, holding a cigarette Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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It looks good until you look at it more closely somewhere else

No, this post is not to do with the phenomenon sometimes referred to as ' beer goggles ' in any way, shape, or form! (by the way, if you search for that term on Google , would that make it become 'beer googles'?) The other day Scott asked: Hi, Great blog! Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:25 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Every character has a story #29: U+1000^H^H^H^H0f40, (TIBETAN or MYANMAR LETTER KA, depending on when you ask)

So I was chatting with Goldie the other day and I think just after or maybe it was just before I made some ridiculous stretch of a joke joke about Anatevka (forgetting momentarily that she did not go by Golde; her nom de plume was Goldie) she asked me Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Small case is not just tinier capitals; italics are not merely slanted letters

The other day Lynn asked: Michael, I'm not sure which group you are working in, but I am hoping you can forward this message to someone who might be able to look at this. We got a message from a customer about the EU Expansion Font Update v.1.02 for XP. Read More...
Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

There's a hole in the soft top, dear Liza, dear Liza (aka be sure to read the find print!)

(title inspired by that old children's song , I remember the Sesame Street version best) It was not that long ago that my car (a black 1995 Saab 900 convertible) was parked at the airport in long term parking, and I was somewhere else. San Jose, I think. Read More...
Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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157766400 seconds in....

A colleague and friend of mine, a former v- at Microsoft who went full time, was talking to me just after I had gone full time. He predicted that I wouldn't last two years. (He himself had already left within a year of when I started) I asked him why Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 26, 2007 10:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Blame Kannada! (ಕನ್ನಡ)

(Inspired by the alternate title from Oh Kannada... ( ಕನ್ನಡ ) and the South Park movie!) One of those interesting issues related to rendering Indic properly came up the other day, in this case with Kannada.... The string in question, first: ಅಹ್ಮ್‌‌ದ್ Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 26, 2007 12:41 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Depends on what you meant about what you meant...

I admit I am no fan of either the MPAA or its ratings system. But some interesting issues in language are raised by its criteria. For example, the use of one of the harsher sexually derived words (e.g. fuck) even as few times can lead to a movie being Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 25, 2007 11:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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MSKLC keyboard layout names in your own language

When I wrote Getting the language (and more!) of an LCID-less keyboard , which admittedly covered a lot of ground, I realized there were a lot of other points that would have to be clarified. Like how MUI (Multilingual User Interface) fits in. I mean, Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 25, 2007 2:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

On Becoming Jane

So I went and saw a movie last night with colleague/comrade/friend Melanie. We went to Lincoln Square Cinemas armed with two recommendations ( Death at a Funeral and Superbad ) but we ended up seeing Becoming Jane , instead.... This would not have been Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 25, 2007 2:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Every character has a story #28: U+1e9e (CAPITAL SHARP S)

That night I saw in the pipeline fair A character that wasn't there Non-existence won't stop the encoding; it's true So it's coming soon to a Unicode near you! It all started with Every character has a story #15: CAPITAL SHARP S (not encoded) , and then Read More...
Posted Friday, August 24, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Getting the language (and more!) of an LCID-less keyboard

So back in May when I was talking about Getting the language of an LCID-less keyboard , I promised to do a bit more explaining about how support for custom locales was integrated into MSKLC 1.4, so that people could write code to work with specific keyboards. Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007 7:05 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

İ şéè đêäđ ķéÿš

(Apologies to M. Night Shyamalan!) So, another great shirt showed up at CafePress.com: There is not a single bit of this shirt that I don't think rocks! :-) Click on the shirt to buy it, etc. Now of course people liked it, but when Simon Daniels saw it Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2007 8:02 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 19 Comments
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In Case there is a bug....

(Today's title has two possible meanings, thanks to the verbal Sargasso of unclarity that is English) Katy King is one of the testers over in the managed world (and sometimes contributor to the BCL Team Blog ) who I manage to run across from time to time. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

It doesn't always happen on the hour....

(Intentionally posted at the half hour mark. Subtle, huh?) Jason's question of the group of people: Hello All, I tried using the Following Code which uses new Date ( ) in JScript: <% var d = new Date(); Response.Write(d); /* d prints the local time Read More...
Posted Monday, August 20, 2007 11:30 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

It is true that your LCID sucks, but your LANGID sucks more

Sometimes when working on software projects we spend so much time thinking a certain way that thinking any other way just does not occur to us. Like the other day when someone sent me some email asking: Hi Michael, I saw your name on MSDN regarding GetLocaleInfo() Read More...
Posted Monday, August 20, 2007 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Not the most sensible post to riff on, but we do deal with GD here at SIAO

It may not be the most sensible post for me to riff on, but it is the one that got me thinking about the issue, so into the breach I go.... I did almost lose a keyboard since I had just taken a big sip of Limonata before looking over at the monitor when Read More...
Posted Monday, August 20, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Additional personal speculation on the Vista MUI SKU story

I was watching Oliver Stone's Wall Street last night and there was a bit that popped out at me. It was the scene where Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) was explaining his plan to bring the airline to profitability: Thank you, Gordon. First, I want you all to know Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 19, 2007 8:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

Finding lost friends and (for something completely different) sites that suck

I found an old friend the other day. Not in person or anything, I found her updated blog. You see she use to be at http://www.laurahcomputing.com/ with a feed at http://www.laurahcomputing.com/atom.xml and then she moved to http://www.shutuplaura.com/ Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 19, 2007 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Who are the heirs of Bernard R. Miller? (aka U+2323 when you say that!)

I am embarrassed by the Heinlein allusion in the title but then I am embarrassed by the whole post so consider this me trying to work outside my comfort zone.... As more and more of the genuine work of Unicode (trying to encode all the scripts of the Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2007 4:59 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

You look so familiar; I think you're my type....

If you have Windows Vista or have the beta of Windows Server 2008, you know that font folder is pretty huge. Hell, if you are a regular reader of this blog then you might remember The fonts directory is freaking huge in Vista from October of last year Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 18, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Some blog boggles and a few disclaimers

NOTHING technical, just self-indulgent meta-blogging crap, so feel free to skip if you aren't interested in the way my mind works; I know I'm not.... I've been thinking about the whole blogging thing and how it fits into the universe, or, to be more precise, Read More...
Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 11:49 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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Normalize Wide Shut

(Apologies to Stanley Kubrick, of course!) It was almost the very first blog post I ever wrote, back in end of November 2004, entitled Normalization and Microsoft -- whats the story? In it I mentioned that during my time at Microsoft I really had heard Read More...
Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 12:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Ever look in the mirror[ing] and not like what you see?

From the TV show Angel , the episode entitled Epiphany : Angel : I'm still not sure what happened... Lorne : What's not to understand? You think you're the first guy who ever rolled over, saw what was lying next to him, and went GYAAAAH!? Okay, my challenge Read More...
Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Alive and well, but more grown up

So I was watching that video about the demolition of building 100 at Microsoft. You may have seen it if you work for Microsoft.... Anyway, they talked about all of the new buildings that were coming, and they showed all of the graffiti and damage that Read More...
Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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It doesn't really support UTF-8

Aaron asks (via the contact link): Michael, Issue that I hope you can help with. Looks like the default on MACOSX is to do samba information using UTF-8-MAC, which is apparently decomposed normal form, rather than the normal UTF-8. NetServerGetInfo doesn't Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2007 2:29 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

The problem with characters stuffing the ballot box

Standards are great, but sometimes deciding to follow them after the fact can be complicated. This post talks about such a situation. The bug report that came in was reasonably straightforward (I'll provide the translated version to avoid that extra level Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2007 2:16 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

'crap cartoon font' (Part 2)

This is one of many posts that was written around the time that TypeCon2007 was going on, and edited later.... This is a follow-up to part 1 of these bunch of posts.... In the case of special fonts that cover specific scripts (for example Aparjita, a Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:53 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Fighting an astronaut -- so easy even a caveman could do it!

So I found myself talking (well, e-mailing) with an old friend last night from way back when. Always an interesting experience, in this case because of the reason (she wanted to know which episode of the TV show Angel had the big argument about Cavemen Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2007 11:56 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments
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Excel to Led Zeppelin -- No 'in through the out door'

Wherever John Bonham is, I doubt he'd be very happy about this. Regular readers may remember my post from almost two years ago entitled Is Excel CSV misusing NLS functionality? that explains how Excel's CSV import functionality depends on the LOCALE_SLIST Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

International candidates want international recruiters

I already have a job at Microsoft and these days I am seldom finding myself in other countries, but if I were interested in being at Microsoft and I didn't live here, I know that I'd love to know who the good contacts might be.... In that spirit, I thought Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007 11:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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On successfully testing international if you don't know squat about international test

It was an old George Carlin routine, it went something like this: And the pharmacist is always stoned, ever notice that? Check his eyes, he's experimenting with something out there. How come he can never fill a prescription right away? He's always saying Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007 1:23 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Do what Icon, not what I say, aka MUI is still making me bipolar

Now it is no secret that I have a MacBook Pro. And it is also no secret that I installed the latest version of Boot Camp on it (currently that means 1.4). And again no secret that I deleted the partition Boot Camp created for Windows (after being careful Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 19 Comments

Some documentations is having troubles with theirs pluralizations syntaxes

Johannes Rössel posted in the Suggestion Box: The Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines state in the section »Dialog boxes« ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa511268.aspx ) the following: Be grammatically correct . Use singular units when Read More...
Posted Monday, August 13, 2007 9:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

The font cold war?

This is one of many posts that was written around the time that TypeCon2007 was going on, and edited later.... A confession for you all. I did not get the Mac to allow myself to fit in better at TypeCon. Honestly. But at the same time, I am really happy Read More...
Posted Monday, August 13, 2007 7:08 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Update on the Apple of my I^HWindows

Let me see, it was back on July 27th that I posted Boot Camp 1.3 and MSKLC (also 1.3) -- excitement, enjoyment, and a wrinkle or three . This post described various problems with custom keyboard layouts placed in directories other than the %WINDIR% one. Read More...
Posted Monday, August 13, 2007 5:29 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Blast from the [email] past about IWordBreaker

A while back, Windows Fundamentals developer Ryan Myers asked me a question via email that I could not find a few days later (and did not remember who sent it, I only remembered that it had to do with Index Server). Anyway, I found the message yesterday Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 11:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

English as a NEW second language...

I have been meaning to write something about a recent traumatic experience that happened to me, but things have been so hectic that I haven't had the chance. It even involves language a bit! This is the story of a haircut. But let me back up for a second Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 10:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Hello Madda, Hello Father (Iranian style)

Collation of the Arabic script in Windows has really had its ups and downs over the years. And customers tend to notice that sort of thing -- there are few things as visible as software screwing up the alphabet. Some of the results were beyond outrageous Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 10:53 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

On the error, and the inspiration, of randomness

This is one of many posts that was written around the time that TypeCon2007 was going on, and edited later.... One of the more fascinating of the people who presented at TypeCon2007 was Professor Edward Mendelson , whose presentation Dispatches From the Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 1:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Not ((over-negation) | (prepositional confusion) | (unworthy of a blog post))

A friend of mine was reading some Language Log articles and saw Bill Poser's The Word "Islamic Terrorism" . He was struck funny by a bit of the text in that article: Opinions vary as to how the Republicans are doing in the War on Terror, but they're definitely Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Documentation does not always imply existence

You ever hear those fun stories about people who the fast food drive thru had to serve because someone left the outside sign's lights on? Well, software doesn't really work that way. So documentation does not always imply existence; sometimes, documentation Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 11:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

'crap cartoon font' (Part 1)

This is one of many posts that was written around the time that TypeCon2007 was going on, and edited later.... No, this is not a post about Comic Sans MS , though I'm sure some of the contributors to and fans of http://www.bancomicsans.com/ might think Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 10:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Should old aquaintance *not* be forgot, code pages may screw up their names anyhow

I can always count on Cristian Secară to send me mail about random internationalization issues, whether or not they are in Microsoft products. :-) Just the other day he pointed a new one out to me, this one in Community Server (the technology behind SIAO Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 9:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

I've been to the desert on a dead key with no name

Reader Grieg Winter asked via the Contact link at one of those weird transitional days when the Suggestion Box was just past the 90-day mark: Hi Mike, I do some software input panel programming for the Pocket PC platform. Nothing commercial, just for Read More...
Posted Friday, August 10, 2007 8:11 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Some of the less intuitive parts of MSKLC's user interface

A while back, Giovanni asked me via the contact link: Hi Michael, I am writing this to you because I have found your blog and you seem pretty well informed about MSKLC. Using MSKLC (a tool I've long waited for!), I've been trying to create a windows keyboard Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 09, 2007 11:04 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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The phantom kern get smashed, but he may invade someone else's space if he does

This is one of many posts that was written around the time that TypeCon2007 was going on, and edited later.... So last week, at the very beginning of TypeCon 2007, there was a workshop about math fonts and the Microsoft math engine. And this is like the Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 09, 2007 8:57 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The user locale of the system account is not the system locale

One can get into trouble when one mixes metaphors.... Take for example the GetSystemDefaultLCID function from the Win32 API, which as the documentation claims will "Returns the locale identifier for the system default locale." We know that this is the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 08, 2007 4:12 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

The SIAO submarine running silent, and a scheduled live appearance

Sorry to all of my regular readers who have had trouble getting their SIAO fix for the last few days.... I actually have a whole bunch of posts to put up related to the almost entirely awesome TypeCon 2007 and such, and I will try to start getting them Read More...
Posted