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September 2005 - Posts

MVPs are awesome, but even *they* know that there are others...

Let me start by saying that MVPs are awesome. I have been talking to many of them here at the Summit and will be talking to many more. They are great contacts and they really are an invaluable help to customers of Microsoft products. Now even MVPs know Read More...
Posted Friday, September 30, 2005 12:03 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments
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The book idea that didn't happen

In my post About [not] writing books I said the following: And there was one great idea I had for a book and I even pitched it to my former acquisitions editor Sharon when she started working for Hungry Minds (when it was its own company). But it was Read More...
Posted Friday, September 30, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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If it is not documented....

Ivan just contacted me with the following message: Hello, I've found a bug in a native NT API, specifically NtQueryDirectoryObject, who should I report it to? The report a bug link on microsoft.com just gives a phone number and I don't want to pay an Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 29, 2005 9:14 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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It's already in there, or it's on the way

Warning: this post picks on Scott Hanselman a bit. But it is only in good fun because I happen to think he is an awesome developer/RD/MVP even if he messes up the occasional string comparison . Note his awesome formulation of how to do string comparisons Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

I guess I lied...

...about the size of the 'Dr. International' sign I was sitting under -- if you will recall, I claimed it would be a big sign. Well, here it is, compared to a monitor to give some context: Clearly the people who told me to expect a big sign have some Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2005 6:29 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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See you at the MVP Summit

Inspired by Sara Ford's post , I thought I would mention that I too was going to be at the MVP Summit. I will be at the Microsoft Programs & Services Expo on Wednesday, September 28th at 1:00pm to 5:00pm. I'll be at a booth with a big sign over it Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2005 10:28 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

People notice when the sorting doesn't work

Bill Poser was talking about Multilingual Google earlier, and I noted an interesting bit toward the bottom: Using Google in another language is a fun way to try out a language you don't know real well. It's easy to switch to a language you do know well Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2005 9:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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FAT/FAT32 oddness on Win2000

It all seemed so simple -- that whole 'uppercase and binary comparison' semantic. Used by NTFS, by Windows in so many places like named pipes, mutexes, environment variables, and so on. But then there is FAT and FAT32. :-( Take the two characters: ㄱ U+3131 Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2005 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Using Hijri dates in SQL Server

Back in the end of April I talked a little about the Hijri calendar, and back in the beginning of April I posted some more. In that last post I talked about the date advance functionality in Regional and Language Options that lets small alterations to Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

What I learn versus what I am told

A few years ago, there was someone internal at Microsoft who was asking about storing binary data in a string. Since they were using VB, I pointed out the many problems with a lot of VB (the intrinsic controls, the built-in functions, the Win32 and other Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 27, 2005 1:50 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Acronyms do not become words that fast!

I used to hear a story from a colleague about an Admin who would talk about how someone with status was a Very "V.I.P." person (from the description she was someone who you could tell was putting the quotes there, even if she was speaking). This is obviously Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 27, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments
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The PUA? P.U. !

Not everything is in Unicode. I mean, it is close, but there are still lots of things that are not there. They fall into two categories: Items that are not appropriate for encoding within Unicode, such as already encoded characters, logos, and other such Read More...
Posted Monday, September 26, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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Every character has a story #15: CAPITAL SHARP S (not encoded)

Regular reader Maurits asked, in the Suggestion Box: Can you comment on Andreas Stötzner's 2004 proposal for an upper-case ß code point, which was rejected by the Unicode consortium? http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2888.pdf The proposal in question Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 25, 2005 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 2.1 (is this on?)

Ok, I am now three posts into this series: Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 0 (HISTORY) Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 1 (the broad strokes) Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 2 (generating Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 25, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

The basics of supplementary

I thought I would explain a bit more about how surrogates work in Unicode, since it does not seem very well described in a whole lot of places. First, some definitions (all from the Unicode Glossary and the Unicode Roadmap sites): Basic Multilingual Plane Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 24, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 19 Comments
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The Microsoft Company Meeting

This is not a post about the Company Meeting itself, which happened today. I am sure that with all the trouble they take to limit attendance to fulltime employees that it would be a violation of one NDA or another to post about it. :-) But I thought I Read More...
Posted Friday, September 23, 2005 6:45 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Stick a fork in GetCharacterPlacement

Joseph asked in the newsgroups the other day: I have a problem rendering some Unicode characters. I have a particular instance although it is representative of a more general problem. I have a sequence of five Unicode characters. They are 0A38 0A36 0A47 Read More...
Posted Friday, September 23, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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No charset meta tag?

I just got a message from Mihai yesterday: Digging into the indented links issues a couple of days ago, I got to see the source of your blog. To my surprise, there is no charset meta in the head section. Deadly sin! :-) Anything to say in your defense? Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005 5:00 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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The casing table case (.NET)

When I was in elementary school, I read a book entitled The Violin Case Case . To be honest, I remember very little about it other than the title, as well as an hour long conversation we had about the title (which now that I think about it may have been Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Getting the language string

HasnKyu Park asked in the newsgroups: Dear guys, 1. Please refer to following table http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/intl/nls_locations.asp If I get the GEOID, How can I get the Location string in locale language? for example, with the identifier Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

See you at the MVP Summit

Inspired by Sara Ford's post , I thought I would mention that I too was going to be at the MVP Summit. I will be at the Microsoft Programs & Services Expo on Wednesday, September 28th at 1:00pm to 5:00pm. I'll be at a booth with a big sign over it Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 21, 2005 8:25 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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How to turn off the CAPS LOCK key

Earlier today, I talked about the fact that some people hate the CAPS LOCK key . Well, Jeff D. posted the steps to turn the CAPS LOCK off in Windows XP and Server 2003, and I thought that I would repost them so that others who are not looking at the comments Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 21, 2005 9:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments
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More on OEMCP vs. ACP

Yesterday, someone asked: I have a cmd line tool. On French Windows its output is correct in the cmd window but when I redirect it to a file it is no longer good. I noticed that if I set the output encoding on the Console class explicitly to the default Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:03 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Some people hate the CAPS LOCK key

It would seem that I touched a nerve when I talked about various MSKLC Suggestions that had been forwarded to me. Something about the caps lock key, which apparently some people hate like poison , at least since 1989: I don't know why it hasn't made it Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 21 Comments
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I'll leave the blog look alone for a bit

Ok, hopefully people can read everything and it works in the various browsers. But with the continued intentional and unknowing help of Josh and Heath I have pretty much reached some kind of steady state. If you can't see the blog, be sure and say something Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 20, 2005 7:50 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments
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I think we've made progress

I had to install Windows 2000 today. I noticed something that I must have seen dozens of times over the last few years and never noticed: Do you see it? Did we really say that the system locale and user locales control how numbers, currencies, and dates Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments
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How many days in a weekend?

The other day, someone sent me some mail with an interesting question: Hi Micheal, was googling for an answer to this dev question "how do you detect the first day of the weekend and how many days there are in the weekend" Which is a good question. Cause Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments
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Rebuilding MFC/CRT and redistributing?

Leandro asks: Hi Thanks for the article. I'm thinking if could you build the MFC and CRT dlls against Unicows and distribute this built version ? Well, several issues here. 1) If you are Rebuilding the CRT and MFC for Unicode on Win9x , on any version, Read More...
Posted Monday, September 19, 2005 2:45 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Who would win in a fight between Helevetica and Arial?

You be the judge. :-) Like Nathan , I'm not entirely certain what the point of this web site is, or how one might win. But it is an interest in distraction, if nothing else. Personally, I prefer Helevetica. But I freely admit that I may or may not be Read More...
Posted Monday, September 19, 2005 12:13 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 2 (generating sort keys)

Prior posts in the series: Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 0 (HISTORY) Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 1 (the broad strokes) Okay, let's dig into some details, now. :-) If you look back to June when I talked Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 18, 2005 1:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

A shorter 'shortest published sentence of the year' ?

A little while ago, Geoffrey K. Pullum sent up to the Language Log a post entitled Shortest published sentence of the year . And I do agree that the sentence in question: Z. is indeed a very short one. But it got me thinking. There were all those old Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 18, 2005 10:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments
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A new link category for inactive blogs

Here at Sorting It All Out , I take the list of blogs I read quite seriously. But I realized there is something missing from the categorizations I have. Well, actually two things missing: Blogs of relatives and such, like my niece and sister-out-law; Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 17, 2005 5:00 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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Is Excel CSV misusing NLS functionality?

In the newsgroups, Yi Zhang asked: Hi all I've encountered the following situation in my work: a customer of my company reported that he can't read a file created in German user locale correctly from a English user locale. This is because German locale Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 17, 2005 8:27 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments

When is a backslash not a backslash?

The character in question is U+005c , the REVERSE SOLIDUS, also known as the backslash or '\'. It is the path separator for Windows, which is encoded at 0x5c across all of the ANSI code pages. Since path separators are a pretty important requirement, Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 25 Comments
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How long does it take you to grok this code?

You have to be honest if you want to play on this one. :-) Look at the snippet of code below, and tell me how long it takes you to grok the intent: if (!((dwFlags & (GLOBAL_FLAG1 | GLOBAL_FLAG2)) && (!(dwFlags & GLOBAL_FLAG3)))) { break; Read More...
Posted Friday, September 16, 2005 4:42 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments
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Every character has a story #14: U-BOOP (BETTY BOOP)

Regular reader Maurits asked the following in the Suggestion Box: Every character has a story - even Betty Monday, May 09, 2005 5:00 PM by Maurits How about a post on the Betty Boop character? http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UBOOP.pdf Funny you should Read More...
Posted Friday, September 16, 2005 6:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

MSKLC Suggestions

Christoph Päper posted the following to the Suggestion Box (my comments interspersed, which include some thoughts on why things are as they are today, which is not to say they may not be different in the future!): I know, MSKLC, which is a program I had Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 15, 2005 10:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 19 Comments
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Unchecking the checkbox does not necessarily mean 'uninstall'

In Regional and Language Options in Windows XP, in the middle tab, there are always two checkboxes: Checking the top one will cause the following alert: And then if you click the Apply button, you will see the files get installed. If at a later time you Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

I might have stuttered

About a month ago, Ken Skingle asked me about Changing the code page of a text file . I thought I gave a pretty clear answer to the topic. However, the reply I got was the following: Thanks for reply - do not know what is different as my Access is 2002 Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Update on the M.S. front

Ok, I am now about three weeks after my first Novantrone dosage. And I am feeling quite good! I have some symptoms that used to come and go which seemed to have gone for the time being. I am cautiously optimistic about this, because it makes some sense Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 15, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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Not sure I see the point of Google's blog search, either

I doubt Craigrow is the first one to say it either , but I am sure he will not be the last. But what is the point of Google's Blog Search ? Though it looks like /. is having a great time with the idea. Thought I have to admit the funniest comment I saw Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 14, 2005 9:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments
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International presence at the PDC

No, it is not me, I am back in Redmond still.... But as Dr. International mentions , Edward Ye is in the Fundamentals area in the Track Lounges thoughout this week. They did not give him a booth or a poster, but he is definitely there. If you are at the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 14, 2005 9:48 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 1 (the broad strokes)

Prior posts in the series: Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 0 (HISTORY) What makes this problem so much easier in the soon to be released Yukon (SQL Server 2005) is that several different technologies are coming together that, when Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 14, 2005 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

One more thing about Korean....

Last February and then again the day before yesterday I talked a bit about how Korean was encoded twice in the Unicode standard. I thought it might be worthwhile to quote an interesting bit that Ken Whistler posted on the Unicode List the other day, when Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 14, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Here is an interview question for you. :-)

I am not doing interviews at the moment, but I could actually see using this one (another question will come along by the next time I an interviewing someone, so I don't think I am losing too much). But I thought I would ak it here for those who love Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2005 5:17 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 67 Comments

Now available: Extend Your Code's Global Reach With New Features In The .NET Framework 2.0

The October 2005 MSDN Magazine is online -- and so is our new article! You can read it here: Extend Your Code's Global Reach With New Features In The .NET Framework 2.0 Enjoy! Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2005 7:41 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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The Is* Unicode script ranges in .NET's RegEx

You'd think they would have a help topic that would list these, wouldn't you? I mean, since topics like Character Classes documents that they exist.... Ah well, I'll just do it now. Here are the ones as of Whidbey. Note that they are only up to Unicode Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2005 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Extending collation support in SQL Server and Jet, Part 0 (HISTORY)

It was some time back in late 90s. Folks on the Microsoft Jet [red] team were really worried about the Jet reliance on the OS collation functions for CJK sorts, since they would give different results across several of the different supported versions Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2005 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

One more thing about some of those CJK fonts....

On Sunday night I posted about a small fact in CJK fonts, when I talked about Fonts that are 'fixed-width' even if they do not claim to be . I thought I would talk about a few other things about some of those fonts (the fixed width ones).... Whether one Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2005 12:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Confusion about HttpRequest.UserLanguages

Shaun mentioned to me: I just noticed that HttpRequest.UserLanguages says that it returns the user languages in preferential order but does not specify the format in which it returns the languages. A novice programmer might expect it to return English, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

You probably don't want to use Microsoft's code page 21027

Late last month, I suggested that you probably don't want to use Microsoft's code page 20269 and then I explained why. Just after that, I had a few choice words about the limitations of code page 1258 . Well, here we go again.... The details? Well, the Read More...
Posted Monday, September 12, 2005 8:40 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Is Kana 'alphabetic' ? Depends on who you ask....

In the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup, Christian Kaiser asked: Given the appended small program, I can test whether a Unicode character is AlphaNumerical or not. If I call it using Half-Width Katakana (arg "0xff66" for example), Read More...
Posted Monday, September 12, 2005 7:20 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Theory vs. practice for Korean text collation, Redux

Back in February, I talked about theory vs. practice for Korean text collation , comparing Microsoft's implementation of old Hangul versus the one specified by Unicode (which uses normalization to move between the Korean Jamo and the Korean Hangul syllables). Read More...
Posted Monday, September 12, 2005 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

How does Microsoft assign new collation weights?

A few days ago, in response to my post about the silly NLS question , reader Gabe posted the following comment : In all honesty, I can imagine somebody reading your blog, seeing you expound on various parts of Cyrillic, Chinese, and Sanskrit, and thinking Read More...
Posted Monday, September 12, 2005 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

An odd place to draw the line

Robert Scoble has a nearly famous policy about comments on his blog -- he never deletes them. He lets people vent and rant and leak out whatever ectoplasm or vomit or whatever they are going to spew out on the comment page. And he does not delete them. Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 11, 2005 11:50 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 21 Comments
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Fonts that are 'fixed-width' even if they do not claim to be

When you obtain a font in Windows (whether by CreateFont , CreateFontIndirect , CreateFontIndirectEx , any of the font enumeration functions, or whatever your preferred method is), you will almost always have the option of asking for a FIXED_PITCH font Read More...