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March 2008 - Posts

The End?

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Warning : This particular blog consists mostly of self-indulgent meta-blogging crap and is thus almost entirely ignorable. Note : You know those times when almost anything Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 30, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 65 Comments
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The weird and unpredictable nature of the effects of positive vibes

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! If you have been around for a while then you may have read my Sometimes it seems like everyone hates Microsoft , a description of a particular call to Dell Technical Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 30, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Accountability is a four letter word that no one likes to display in public

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! A bit from Fast Times at Ridgemont High you may recall: BRAD: May I help you? BUSINESSMAN: Yes. This is not the best breakfast I ever ate {he gestures to the sign over Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2008 2:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Somehow I just get a Visual of the Logical Song (as sung by Supertramp)

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! The question seemed so simple (as it usually does): Could you please explain me: why when I have the Arabic (Saudi Arabia) locale then the full date time format (“dddd, Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Staying away from de-emphasized technologies

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! My oldest active Suggestion Box question (from Stef) is: Hey, I'm a IT Student and at home i work alot with access. 'i work alot with' means that i made 3 db's projects Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Word custom dictionaries: 2003 to 2007, Exclude to Exclusions, ANSI to Unicode, sucks to ROCKS!

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Over in the Suggestion Box, Daniel García Magariños asked: Hello there! My proposed topic is "Exclude dictionaries" in Microsoft Word. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/902163 Read More...
Posted Friday, March 28, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The difference between USE X and SPECIFY CUSTOM X can be measured by the # of functions that support each

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Over in the Suggestion Box, Marvin asked: Puzzled by MSDN docs. IMLangConvertCharset is recommended for speed but there is no way to tell it what default (fallback) Read More...
Posted Friday, March 28, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The disunification of Norwegian and Danish sorting ( SQL Server 2008 Edition!)

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! The story behind today's blog post started in Why do we call w 'double u' -- doesn't it look more like a 'double v'? , where I talked about the Swedish Academy's change Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Hebrew Vistas (aka And that's where I found Vista, was on the way to Jerusalem)

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! This post has nothing to do with any issue in the Middle East whatsoever. I suppose I have an opinion or two about that but it is unlikely to be a topic in this blog Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Vietnamese still ain't quite right

Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! You may have read Vietnamese is a complex language on Windows , which discusses some fixes that were put in for Vietnamese in Vista. The nature of the bug and the fixes that were Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Cleaning up the water (globally) and hoping to get around better

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! You may recall when I blogged 'It's an iBOT,' I would say. 'Yes you bought it, but what is it?' she would answer , the Colbert Report interview of Dean Kamen talking Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 26, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Yet another reason to avoid the shuffle

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! I already had my own reasons for avoiding the shuffle, after the "random chance event" that led to me being really down on relationships (for more info see The shuffle? Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Bush might've still hid the facts, but he can't hide them from Vista SP1/Server 2008 Notepad!

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! My blog Behind 'How to break Windows Notepad' was a pretty popular one, as were its follow-up posts -- More on that which breaks Windows Notepad and The Notepad encoding Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Unicode not being the default is slower and leads to bugs; maybe it ought to change?

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Meanwhile over in the microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization newsgroup, don rau asked: I am trying to load a Korean string resource from a DLL. I use LoadStringW Read More...
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Overheard, yet again

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! One never knows what one is going to overhear, does one? :-) Maybe "Overheard" needs its own category. These are fun! Anyway, it went something like this: HIM : That Read More...
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Vowel "harmony", enforced by political interests?

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! A few years back, I was chatting with Thomas Milo of DecoType, I believe at an Internationalization and Unicode Conference. Now Tom has rather unique background in Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 23, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The ballad of Hope Sandoval?, aka Where are The Warm Inventions when you need 'em?

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Reader Dana asked me (after reading [Turning]Into dust, aka 'Some feelings may not be available in this blog' ): Do you really prefer the Ashtar Command version of Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 23, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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GetGeoInfo is a mostly useless bloody waste of a function that only a "B" Ark Golgafrincham could love

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! I always want to think the best a function. Kind of like how I always want to think the best of people. Especially if I know that it is a part of an API set that I Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 22, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

*Insert a pun involving the word TREMA here*

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! I decided to go out tonight 1,2,3 . Originally I wasn't going to. It was a long day, I was tired. Then I got a call. The call was at 7:52pm 4 . Who called? A friend. Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 22, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Language detection, language translation... it IS exciting, so why I am yawning?

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! In particular, I am speaking for neither Microsoft nor Google nor AltaVista nor Yahoo nor Systran nor my nieces nor my grandmother nor any ex-girlfriend I have ever Read More...
Posted Friday, March 21, 2008 10:36 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Did UnC "My name is URL" on TV the other day? Fontastic!

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Posts like this one are one of the reasons, you'll see why if you read down far enough, though if you are easily offended I would really kindly request that you leave. Read More...
Posted Friday, March 21, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Can you keep a Blog, because the best little blogs are kept (Oh!)

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! Plus it is entirely offtopic so if thst kind of thing bothers you, then you should just move on.... I have found myself listening to Louis XIV a bit more than I ever Read More...
Posted Friday, March 21, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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That's no gap, dear; that's a huge freaking chasm!

Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer )! The other day, Qian asked me via the Contact link: Hi Michael, I've been reading your blog for the past several months and find it really helpful. I've been able to Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

I cannot underscore that ampersand enough

From the Suggestion Box, Dawn asked: I am stumped. I appear to have some type of autocorrect changing ampersand signs in a report header title, even though I have switched off all autocorrect functions. I have tried quotes around the entire title, quotes Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

The forensic typographers found no link to Lucida Console, and the D.A. had nothing to fallback to

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! In particular, this blog discusses what I think people ought to be doing next in their jobs despite the fact that I have neither authority nor responsibility to make Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

Before you say "What's next?" you have to figure out the action items

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! In particular, this blog discusses what I think people ought to be doing next in their jobs despite the fact that I have neither authority nor responsibility to make Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Conventional wisdom is retarded, aka What the @#%&* is _O_U16TEXT?

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Once upon a time, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And not too long after that, everybbody knew that the Sun orbited around the Earth instead of the other way Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

M&Ms -- they melt in your mouth, but what about in your cat?

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft -- plus it is s off-topic as you can get without a prescription! From nearer to the end than the beginning of So Long, and Thanks For All of the Fish by Douglas Adams: Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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If we sorted Bopomofo like we do Pinyin, would it still be considered "Traditional" Chinese?

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Pronunciation based sorting for Traditional Chinese is commonly requested from people, and the requests fall within two broad categories: Cantonese pronunciations -- Read More...
Posted Monday, March 17, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Reductionizational innaccurization in acknowledmentary textual material

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Back in the end of 2000, then internationalization PM lead in SQL Server approached me about a contract. I was a contractor back then so this kind of thing happened all Read More...
Posted Monday, March 17, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

FORCE SEEK vs. FORCES EEK

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! At first blush, it reminded me of my own battles with KeysEx vs. KeySex or ControlsEx vs. ControlSex . With shades of the whole PenIsland vs. PenisLand conundrum when Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 16, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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On changing the world, or at least the way people order things in it

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! You may (if you are a regular reader) have read Predictably (in retrospect), aka Where Wild^H^H^Hindows-Only Things Are, aka SHORT [on ]TIME for a LONG TIME from back Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 16, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

The right hand knows what the left hand is doing, but not that the left hand might be missing some fingers?

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Wonderful news. Well, of a sort.... You may have read As Forrest Gump used to [sorta] say, "Smarmy is as Smarmy Does." from last week. And you may have felt the same Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 15, 2008 8:51 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Yesterday was GlobalDev; Tomorrow is GoGlobal!

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Perhaps you have been to Microsoft's Global Dev elopment and Computing Portal at http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/default.mspx at some time in the past (if you are Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 15, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Swahili^H^H^H^Hllowing our lumps?

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! In this case in particular, these are my opinions as someone not working on the project, and not those of anyone connected with the project itself.... You may have read Read More...
Posted Friday, March 14, 2008 6:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

The shuffle? Be afraid. Be very afraid...

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! I was scooting to the store last night and I had my Zune playing in "shuffle" mode, so the songs would be randomly selected from the playlist. And this wasn't just any Read More...
Posted Friday, March 14, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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More than one kind of "alphabetical" order

Please read disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! You may remember seeing Consistency in the Windows Shell is not overrated; it's just underobserved! if you are a regular reader (it was just over a week ago!). In that Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 13, 2008 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Yet another face to irony

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! There are more and more senses to irony all of the time. We have the actual definition of irony (the opposite of what is or might be expected). And there is irony Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 13, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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If they aren't in Unicode, what could they be in? And you can [smart-]quote me on that!

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! The other day Joe Clark asked me via the Contact link: Does Word still use non-Unicode characters for smart quotes? Now Joe is someone I might be talking about soon, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Chaudhuri vs. Chaudhary?

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Now it isn't Bangalore vs. Bengaluru . And it isn't Uighur vs. Uyghur . And it really isn't Farsi vs. Persian . Or Macao vs. Macau . But the other day, reader James Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008 4:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Why are UTF-8 encoded Unix shell scripts *ever* written or edited in Notepad?

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Everybody hates Microsoft. Well, not everybody. But hating Microsoft seems awfully popular.... It seems like to try to be the best at anything you have to make choices Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008 6:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 25 Comments

Where's the Beef^H^Hngali?

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! I think it was several UTC ( Unicode Technical Committee ) meetings back. Some of the representatives from the government of India were there, and they talked about Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2008 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

What's wrong with one of GetNumberFormat's callers? And what's wrong with GetNumberFormat?

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Some of you may recall Igor Levicki, the guy who had 64-bit keyboards working before MSKLC 1.4 was released who I mentioned in If you just don't think you can hold Read More...
Posted Monday, March 10, 2008 6:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

When Ping was first described (back in 1933)

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! This one almost reminds me of that other blog, the When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, the daddy wants to give the mommy a special gift. So he buys Read More...
Posted Monday, March 10, 2008 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Under the big space, you may find a 'Road to Nowhere' sentence

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! The other day I popped by Yaniv's office to ask him a question (I will be blogging about the fruits of that conversation another day) and while I was there he gave Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 09, 2008 6:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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When in doubt, blame it on the @#%&*! SMILERS

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! Aimee Mann's upcoming album, titled @#%&*! Smilers , is due in stores on June 3rd. We'll see if the spam filters catch that as a curse word (like I mentioned Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 09, 2008 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Less is more, especially when you confuse ordinal and cardinal numbers

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! It was yesterday I think that Simoen asked: The ngen.exe online help suggests that priority 3 is the highest priority, but .wxs files make 1 the highest, and 3 the Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 08, 2008 11:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Influence vs. Impact: the scooter metaphor

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! It is that time of year -- you know, when HR is in the air (so to speak). It is the midyear, and everyone scrambles to fill in the forms and such, hoping it will Read More...
Posted Saturday, March 08, 2008 9:05 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Some armchair root cause analysis of the suckage of lstrcmpi

Please read the disclaimer ; content of Michael Kaplan's blog not approved by Microsoft! So the other day Stephan T. Lavavej (also known by his initials, STL , which also happens to be what he works on!) came by and we chatted for a bit about development Read More...
Posted Friday, March 07, 2008 5:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Requirements first, criticism of attempted solutions second!

Please read the disclaimer ; content not approved by Microsoft! Dujuan's question to the larger distribution list was easy enough: Hi, I want to get the language name in the OS, such as string ”en-US” or “it-IT” . I use the GetLocaleInfo(GetSystemDefaultLCID(), Read More...
Posted Friday, March 07, 2008 5:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Getting the IME name (for someone who speaks Chinese, based on code from an article written in Chinese, when you don't speak Chinese)

Please read the disclaimer ; content not approved by Microsoft! The other day I heard from programmer Scawen Roberts via the Contact link over a couple of days. His question was: Thank you for your "random stuff of dubious value" which has helped me here Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 06, 2008 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

As Forrest Gump used to [sorta] say, "Smarmy is as Smarmy Does."

Please read the disclaimer ; content not Microsoft-approved! Amazing the things you see over in the microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization newsgroup.... :-) Like the other day, when Laurent PIERRE asked: Hello, Some month ago, it was possible to Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 06, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Hints on how to unhint, aka We're not comparing apples and oranges; it's more like apples and apple seeds!

Please read the disclaimer ; content not approved by Microsoft! Over in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup, prevodcilac's question was: Is there way to disable font hinting in Uniscribe, while using for example ScriptPlace??? Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 05, 2008 7:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Where was that Locale Builder again? The Platform SDK ain't telling....

Please read the disclaimer ; content not approved by Microsoft! The other day, Tom pointed me at a broken link in the Platform SDK documentation: Michael, When I go to http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms776342.aspx and click on the Microsoft Locale Read Mor