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October 2007 - Posts

Script and Font Support in Windows

This is some info that Peter Constable put together which I am re-posting with permission... good stuff! :-) Script and Font Support In Windows Since before Windows 2000, new script support has been added in each major release of Windows. The following Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Making things better out from under people: the story of MUI

Over in the Suggestion Box, Kriz asked a question related to something I have been wanting to cover for some time: Can you please shed some light on the inner workings of SHLoadIndirectString ()? I'm trying to "MUI enable" some of my application and it Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The L word (Limonata, I mean - the *other* L word)

Even the most occasional reader of this blog probably has some notion of my love for San Pellegrino Limonata . Anyway, after Trader Joe's stopped carrying this vital substance (to me, less important than oxygen since I inhale but more important than water Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 31, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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EXPECTED is in the eye of the [non-expecting type of ]expectant

Lori asked: I’m seeing results with VB’s StrComp function that I would not expect. For example: StrComp("Lee-P", "Leema", vbTextCompare) Returns 1, but StrComp("Lee-P", "Leema", vbBinaryCompare) Returns -1 as I would expect. Why does this first return Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

How are *you* feeling today? And can I quote you on that?

Yet another metablog post -- and this one even has linguistic delusions! A good friend warned me the other day that some people might be afraid to talk to me, since they would fear me directly or indirectly quoting them here on my blog. In honesty I don't Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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If the Novantrone juice isn't worth the squeeze...

Jim asked me via the Contact link: Hello Michael.....I am interested in your research on Novantrone. I also am currently using it. I have not anything good or bad to report. Could you possibly share the experiences that others have told you about it with Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Microsoft is a Form 'C' shop, Part 1

Microsoft has had Unicode as a part of its operating system offerings since the easrliest days of its 32-bit platforms. And a lot that support predates asnything that Unicode later chose to provide, thus we don't use the Unicode Collation Algorithm for Read More...
Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Sometimes RunOnce is one time too many

Former colleague, and consistently Australian regular reader Mike Williams asked in the Suggestion Box: The issue at http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2007/01/25/1526224.aspx still hasn't been fixed. I think it is about a year since it was reported Read More...
Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 6:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Sometimes everyone is happier when the game is Fixed (aka Consoling Consolas lovers)

Oscar asked over in the Suggestion Box: Hi Michael, I was just curious if any progress had been made on adding line drawing glyphs to Consolas. You'd mentioned it on October 19, 2006: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/10/19/842895.aspx#844137 Read More...
Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 6:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Japanese line breaking rules can be quite complex

A very long time ago, John Black asked in what had been the oldest post in the Suggestion Box: I've noticed when developing web pages that use Japanese characters that many web browsers treat *every* character as a potential word boundary, meaning if Read More...
Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 6:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

They say a leopard can't change its spots, but I upgraded anyway!

I decided to say what the hell and pick up a new copy of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and went to upgrade my Mac earlier today (you know, the MacBook Pro I have mentioned before ). This was a scary thing to do, since I had no AC adapter (I accidentally left Read More...
Posted Sunday, October 28, 2007 3:49 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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What it means to me to have a Blog containing a blog in which I blog about stuff (like 'Go [[to ]the ]Prom')

I might be a bit of a closet prescriptivist. Which I think sucks, given how much I ridicule the practice, especially when I think back to instructors and teachers who would do it while treating the issues as if they were natural law, or at the very least Read More...
Posted Sunday, October 28, 2007 9:51 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Schrödinger's post?

After I posted Jokes that aren't really all that funny in the end (aka At least SQL Server isn't on our case) and really had a chance to reflect on the fact that I thought the post was going to be quite funny and then before I posted it realized that Read More...
Posted Sunday, October 28, 2007 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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I am 20 out of 21 and flexible on the capital punishment issue

This post originally was part of a very different blog which (thankfully) no longer exists and could be best described as a rawer version of SiaO -- a fledging blogger's first effort at transformation. It has been reposted here for essentially no good Read More...
Posted Sunday, October 28, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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VK_DECIMAL is always valid (except formerly in Serbia)

Regular reader, comrade, veritable demigod in all things related to keyboards, and the man behind Tavultesoft Keyman, and provider of Australian beer Marc Durdin mentioned to me: Hi Michael, Just an FYI - didn't see a mention of it on your blog... We Read More...
Posted Saturday, October 27, 2007 12:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Keyboards gone wild, or maybe just French (aka CSI: Text Input)

Mike's question, despite being disarmingly simple, went several days without anyone responding to it: Periodically (2 or 3 times a day) if I click on the start icon/pearl and start to type something, my keyboard just goes wild....a regular one is transposing Read More...
Posted Saturday, October 27, 2007 9:26 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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All that and a bag of chips^H^H^H^H^HEx's

From near the end of Gifford's The Assassini (which you may recall I recently mentioned reading to counteract the effect of Becoming Jane on my sense, sensibilities, pride, and prejudice): "...She had excavated four decades and more, and she found an Read More...
Posted Saturday, October 27, 2007 12:09 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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All things being equal, your mom probably has an easier time with case insensitivity than not

So, response to the recent In Case you have problems that you might think are ǸȦȘȚȲ , Jeff (I suspect in frustration or surprise) commented : Holy crap. Wouldn't it be just easier (and more useful) to be case sensitive? I've had it invisibly destroy data, Read More...
Posted Friday, October 26, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

I agree, the best way to process Unicode input is indeed to make somebody else do it

I saw Raymond Chen's The best way to process Unicode input is to make somebody else do it and I wholeheartedly second that motion. Wow, riffing on Raymond two posts in a row! And there are lots of reasons for it -- not just the things he talked about Read More...
Posted Friday, October 26, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Superstition: Why MSLU stopped using GetFileAttributesW in its platform detection

I was reading Raymond's Superstition: Why is GetFileAttributes the way old-timers test file existence? the other day and all I could think about was the fact that the way that Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems (MSLU) had to drop Read More...
Posted Friday, October 26, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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Not all in sync quite yet (aka SQL and the CLR and Windows and .NET)

Regular reader Jan Kučera asks over in the Suggestion Box: Hello, Yet another possible suggestion from my thoughts... If one has (yes, I am the one :)) a central database for multi-cultural data (that means, in one column the entries could be in English, Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Jokes that aren't really all that funny in the end (aka At least SQL Server isn't on our case)

SQL Server likes to keep a bit of independence from the operating system. At the same time, they like for the experience to be the same no matter what version you are running on -- because any behavior difference between the platforms on which it runs Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Is it a Unicode issue? A non-Unicode issue? What the hell is it? (aka Beware former [Font ]Associations)

I was in a relationship a few years back with someone who had previously been married. Then again I was too. We were both damaged goods, technically speaking. Anyway, her ex, perhaps seeing his influence declining, tended to try to find insidious ways Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

SOL trying to change the CE UI?

Pat O. asks over in the Suggestion Box: I am not playing by the rules as usual. I am attempting to create a Windows CE device that supports on the fly language changes. Just because that was obviously not hard enough I am also using several Far Eastern Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Ding dong, the hack is gone (aka Cutting the hacked cord, too)

Over in the Suggestion Box, Chris Ross asks: You explained a rather dirty registry hack to allow people to use an IME with another keyboard layout (IE Dvorak) in this article: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/04/16/408853.aspx I assume that Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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In Case you have problems that you might think are ǸȦȘȚȲ

People often don't understand the consequences of the case insensitive file system provided by NTFS. So today I will show an extreme example of a [im]possibly complicated situation.... So, we'll start with our characters: Ǹ/ǹ U+01f8 / U+01f9 LATIN [CAPITAL|SMALL] Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

Getting the preserved case of a file wHeN tHe uSeRs tYpE wHaTeVeR tHe hElL tHeY wAnT tO

I gave blathered about the importance of preserving case and of getting the preserved case in posts like In any CASE, it is somewhat INSENSITIVE to point out to someone how well PRESERVED they are and If you don't always preserve case, you don't always Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Blog: 1; Blogger: 0 (aka You must think carefully before devoting yourself to a lifetime of blogging)

The conversation went a bit like this: "Are you ready for lunch?" "Oh, can we reschedule? I have some stuff I have to do here." "Sounds ominous. Important meetings?" "No, no meetings." "Specs to finish up?" "No, all my specs are done." "Okay, another Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 24, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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If you would wait till I *FINISHED* what I was trying to say, you punk... (aka Premature validation)

This may have happened to you before. Sometimes I am trying to have a conversation with someone. And then when I start to say something, they interrupt me because they hear the first thing I said and decide to react to that thing before I have finished Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

If working above U+FFFF is a problem n your program, then so is the basic stuff, too

So yesterday, the question asked on a Win3 programming alias inside Microsoft was: I am looking for some document on Windows support for Unicode characters above 0xFFFF. How well does Windows support these code points? Since each character can no longer Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

Some thoughts on global development projects

I was asked the other day whether I though global development projects (by which I mean projects whose creation and maintenance span multiple points on the globe) could work. This is probably a good time to point out these are my opinions and mine alone, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2007 6:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

I'm not screaming though it seems I may be the only one...

This is one of those multiple sclerosis posts that you probably should just skip. Seriously, I mean it -- I'd skip it if I didn't have to stay and write it! Someone I know had gotten a link in the mail about multiple sclerosis and they sent it to me asking Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 23, 2007 6:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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San Diego incendre (maybe you could help me give them a hand?)

So Stacy (who I just met at IUC31, if you were there you may have met her too?) calls me up on the phone last night. I ask her how she is doing. A bit taken aback, she asks me "Don't you know what's going on here?" I need to pay more attention to the Read More...
Posted Monday, October 22, 2007 9:38 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Governments can be one of the last places to get the best keyboard layouts

David asked me via the Contact link: Is there a way that users can submit keyboard layouts for inclusion in future versions of Windows? I have developed keyboard layouts for the Tajik language, one similar to the one included in Vista, and one for those Read More...
Posted Monday, October 22, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Traditional to Simplified or vice-versa? According to Windows, you're on your own....

Stephen asks via the Contact link: I'm making a program doing a Traditional/Simplified Chinese conversion in Delphi. However, all the web pages shown in Google search results are LCMapString. I did try using this LCMapString. LCMapString can do a mapping Read More...
Posted Monday, October 22, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

We weren't Vista heroes, but I think we were kinda heroic

Warning: In this blog post I will be tooting my own horn. If that kind of thing disgusts you (as it usually does I!) as self-important and self-congratulatory ego-driven rubbish then you may want to skip on to the next post due out in a few minutes! There Read More...
Posted Monday, October 22, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY - OCTOBER 22, 2007

YES, IT IS THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN. THE TIME I MISSED LAST YEAR.... REF: We missed International Caps Lock Day! :-( AS YOU MAY OR MAY NOT KNOW, THIS BLOG HAS A FEW OF THE MOST ADAMANT CAPS-LOCK HATERS AMONG IT'S READERS, SO THIS IS THEIR DAY TO COME OUT Read More...
Posted Monday, October 22, 2007 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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'Today' is not a breakup song (said her favorite cylon), aka Readers here might prefer to listen to music like normal people do

It is probably important for me to point out that a blog post represents a slice of life -- how I feel when I was writing it. In fact, given that there are times I change my mind by the time I finish a post, it is possible to consider a blog post to be Read More...
Posted Sunday, October 21, 2007 2:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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Of course I will be doing it, I just haven't done it yet....

Kind of a meta-blog post.... I have a friend who told me how she and her boyfriend, despite often being separated by travel, have at the very least talked by phone every day for over a year -- and they alternate who calls each time. I was stunned -- I Read More...
Posted Sunday, October 21, 2007 10:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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'Michael,' she said, 'turns out you're only an asshole in e-mail....'

It started just recently. Like within the last six months. In three different business units of Microsoft, all separate from my own. In each case, a fairly young (well, compared to me) program manager charged with dealing with a particular globalization/internationalization Read More...
Posted Saturday, October 20, 2007 11:59 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Work/life balance, step 2 -- be happy as much and as often as you can (and not just at work!)

There will probably be some technical stuff in here but it will be mostly not so much.... I have had both friends and colleagues warn me about BWI (Blogging While Intoxicated). They usually cite some examples from me, e.g. TechEd Orlando: Day 3 and Amazing Read More...
Posted Saturday, October 20, 2007 8:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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'You're over me?' she asked. 'I didn't even have a chance to be conflicted!'

One of the great things about being able to spend time out in the world, with people, is getting the chance to hear things. I tend to be a people watcher. too. And with all that, you get to hear things from time to time, as well. And sometimes the lines Read More...
Posted Saturday, October 20, 2007 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Music is math, which is truth, which is beauty, which is here at SIAO (for a moment, at least)

One of the problems in being a generalist in so many different areas is that I am interested in so many different things that I had no way of becoming an expert in all of them. Luckily I have friends like Melanie (the technical editor and musical expert Read More...
Posted Friday, October 19, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Supplemental on XP? You may need the CD.

Dan asked via the Contact link: I'm developing a desktop app that needs to display bi-directional text fields and accordingly requires that "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages" be checked in "supplemental language support". I Read More...
Posted Friday, October 19, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

A less intelligent strain of blog spam

I am under attack here by spam and by splogs (hundreds of messages a day almost none of which is getting through due to my comment settings but almost none of which is getting caught by the spam filters. :-( They seem to be equal opportunity (looking Read More...
Posted Friday, October 19, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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Trying to get people to use Unicode? Lock and load, baby!

One of the more fascinating conversations I had with a customer at the recent Internationalization and Unicode conference was with someone who frankly admitted to be there on his own dime, trying to get enough information (well, he called it ammunition, Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 12:46 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Better than a single serving friend!

Maybe a little technical with some language stuff though mostly personal, some may prefer to skip! It was back on Monday when I posted Better than an elevator friend, but... and talked bout n interesting flight down to San Jose where I apparently had Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 8:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

If it seems different, that may not be out of character

And then meanwhile vinaynahata asked: Hi I have an issue with font substitution.I have an italic text which uses Arial as its font.I have been combining font's name along with its style to get its PSname which i use for further processing.However there Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

LocalSystem is people, too!

Glenn asks: Hey Michael... I have a question about the culture info and these settings in the registry. Seeing you have posted a lot of info about this on your blog I was hoping you could help me out a bit :) The question : I was wondering if I could Read More...
Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

CSI: Unicode?

So I attended Tex Texin's How to be a CSI (Encoding Crime Scene Investigator) and although I would have named it differently (preferring CSI: Unicode to go with the theme of the shows), I really did love the entire presentation. It's description: Join Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007 2:11 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

'I was thinking of Lara from Dr. Zhivago....' she said; 'As I often am....' I responded.

Overheard at the 31st Internationalization and Unicode conference, nothing technical whatsoever.... I had just met Laura, who works for ACT (the standardizing testing people). At the opening reception at Adobe. Now I had taken the ACT years ago since Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2007 10:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments
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Trying to figure out if ǣ and a͞e would sound the same

Today I am going to try to clear out some Contact link questions.... And a third recent Contact link question was from Leb: I've been reading your blog for some time now, mostly to clean information on collation. It's good stuff! I do have a problem, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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MS Shell Dlg is __________?

Today I am going to try to clear out some Contact link questions.... The next Contact link question that came in was: a frined an i are making msn logs on ms word. the txt msn uses is ms shell dlg and we cant find out how ot write in that text can u help Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Character info from beyond the Grave

Today I am going to try to clear out some Contact link questions.... The Contact link question was: Heck, the subject could even be "isalnum non-ascii characters" I was looking at this page: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t9zea13t(VS.71).aspx Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 16, 2007 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments