LineServices

re: LineServices

Ian Easson — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:11:31 GMT

While this is all very interesting, I would like to know when Word's layout of ordinary text is going to be improved. Even hyphenation is turned off by default (and a user can even choose not to install it!). For justified paragraphs, the layout is particularly bad ; the user has to know about the truly obscure option to "Use full justification like WordPerfect 5.x" to get even a rough approximation of what can be achieved in text layout with something like TeX. Even in Word 2007, which was supposed to expose to the user all the fomerly obscure capabilities of Word through the Ribbon, all the text layout options are buried many levels deep (and not even accessible via the Ribbon) where no sane user would even find them.

How about some attention to this issue? OK, rants over, I got that off my chest.

By the way, good work on the math layout side.

re: LineServices

MurrayS — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 01:07:42 GMT

Ian, some people around here are probably going to ask me how much I paid you to post that comment. LineServices, PTS and our font technologies support all you ask for and more. But it takes time to integrate these features reliably into Word. As you can imagine, adding the math support to Word 2007 was a tour de force in inself, so adding the globalized optimal paragraph algorithm and full OpenType support was too much to fit into the Office 2007 schedule. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. Please do keep on ranting. As they also say, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

re: LineServices

Peter Lund — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:44:42 GMT

Niklaus Wirth, not Nicolas.

http://www.acm.org/awards/turing_citations/wirth.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth

re: LineServices

someone — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:08:05 GMT

PLEASE ADD FULL OPENTYPE SUPPORT IN WORD 2007'S SUCCESSOR. PEOPLE WILL BE RELIEVED.

re: LineServices

Lionel Fourquaux — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:50:15 GMT

> Ian, some people around here are probably going to ask me how much I paid you to post that comment.

You don't have to pay, I'm giving you a "Me too" for free. Please add a better justification algorithm in Word!

> various versions of LineServices are responsible for line layout in Word, Publisher, RichEdit, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, FrontPage, Visio, and Vista

Is there some chance that the version used by Internet Explorer could be upgraded to support math display? MathML support (builtin, à la Mozilla/Firefox, not using a third party binary behavior) is requested from time to time, and it looks like you have already done most of the work. It would be great to get equation support in HTML e-mails using Windows Mail.

re: LineServices

MurrayS — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 21:14:49 GMT

Lionel, I agree it would be great if Internet Explorer could display MathML with Word 2007's typographic quality. And it's true that most of the hard work is already done. I guess we have to keep our fingers crossed. Btw, you do have equation support in Outlook 2007 email. We use it a lot in discussing math-oriented subjects.

Math in Unicode is hard. So let's have Murray make it easier!

Sorting It All Out — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:44:01 GMT

I have talked about math in Unicode before, like in For those who enjoy mathematics (or, 'Also new in

Word EQ Field and East Asian Formatting

Murray Sargent: Math in Office — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:52:38 GMT

This post discusses aspects of Word’s first math editing and display facility: the EQ field. This field

Word EQ Field and East Asian Formatting

Noticias externas — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:11:00 GMT

This post discusses aspects of Word’s first math editing and display facility: the EQ field. This field

re: LineServices

Natural Male Enhancement — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:40:25 GMT

Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more.

So please keep up the great work. Greetings.

re: LineServices

Henrik Holmegaard — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:47:39 GMT

ISO-IEC Technical Report 15285 discusses three composition models, (a) models in which a character code directly designates a glyph code and its glyph geometry, (b) the intelligent composition model of the Unicode Consortium, and (c) the composition model developed by one of the ISO Standing Committees within which ISO-IEC 10646 character codes are replaced by ISO 100036 glyph codes. Model (a) is a truly terrible technology and model (c) is not applicable since the registration authority (AFII) is disbanded and the registration discontinued.

So, Apple has had model (b) since 1992 and Microsoft has had model (b) since a point in time about five years later, but Apple and Microsoft do not support the intelligent composition model at the top level of operating system user interfaces. There are a range of reasons for this, unfortunately.

ISO-IEC Technical Report 15285 points out that if ISO-IEC 10646 implementation level 3 is invoked then non-unique spelling is involved in the intelligent composition model. Non-unique spelling was supported by the American National Standards Institute (rather, the American National Standards Institute vetoed unique spelling).

There is no rendering specification for the SFNT Spline Font file format, so there is no way to tell in purchasing a type product if it provides for non-unique spelling or indeed for private spelling in the CMAP Character Map. There is also no way to tell in purchasing a type product which Common Locale Data Repository character repertoires it supports for the official writing systems of the European Union.

There is not even a way to tell if the CLDR data is correct since official orthographic organizations are not involved in proofing the data - it is privately provided by enthusiasts some of whom can't spell in their primary writing systems. Microsoft does not use the Common Locale Data Repository, so there is no common repository for foreign software publishers in the United States of America.

There are also problems with marrying normative code space to illustrative data space. First, Microsoft which holds the chair of ISO-IEC 10646 has opposed long identifiers in writing systems other than English. This is not helpful since Apple has implemented a command Show Character Selected in Application to support interactive identification of input character codes for output glyph codes.

Second, at the end of the day what is and what is not a logical marriage of code space to data space is contextual. Æ, æ is a monophthong in Danish and Norwegian that follow Old English, unsurprisingly, but a diphthong in French, so the diphthong ligature substitution in Apple and Microsoft implementations is illogical if it is not contextualised in terms of writing spaces, which do not exist in the Unicode imaging architecture.

These and other problems call for a conference as model (a) is a disaster that should be disparaged publically (and should have been disparaged a decade ago) while model (b) is immature and incapable of multilingual interactivity at this point.

Best wishes,

Henrik Holmegaard

technical writer, mag.scient.soc.

The Math Paragraph

Murray Sargent: Math in Office — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:08:36 GMT

The earlier post Breaking Equations into Multiple Lines describes equation line breaking and alignment.

WordPad Numbering Limit

Murray Sargent: Math in Office — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:18:20 GMT

In Windows 7, WordPad has undergone many improvements even though it uses RichEdit 4.1+ for editing and