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January 2006 - Posts

New in Vista: What's your name? Who's your daddy?

It is probable bordering on certainty that the Zombies were not singing about cultures in the .NET Framework in their song Time of the Season . Even in some kind of prophetic sense. And while I'm sure there are parents out there who may not be keen on Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 8:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

And while I'm on the subject, there is the rest of the world

Regular reader Maurits asked in the Suggestion Box: OK, no Tengwar or Klingon Unicode code points... What about an Esperanto localization of Windows? The Unicode Standard is available in Esperanto: http://www.unicode.org/standard/translations/esperanto.html Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

One reason you should clean up warnings

(The following post is reprinted from a blog that is no longer around. Done so with the permission of the author -- special thanks to Mike Dolenga, for that permission and for having a cynical side that I find quite comforting since it makes me look like Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 7:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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Ā was unexpected at this time.

(Special thanks to Dave Poole for pointing this one out!) It was not too long ago that I got mail from Dave about a strange error he was getting in some automated tests of various SQL Server command line tools. An error that occurred with a command line Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 2:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Are multilingual sorts integrated?

Someone using the handle 'And' asked the following in the Suggestion Box: Sometimes (e.g. in journals) Cyrillic/Greek letters are used in proper names. The sorting order then becomes somewhat complicated. Are systems giving results like the following Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 5:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

It can't be all about the money

Someone with the handle of *g* asked in the Suggestion Box: Hi Michael, I love your blog and read it regularily, even though my primary work interests are in device automation: simply because yours is one of the most interesting blogs to be had ;) I am Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 29, 2006 2:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Handling multilingual data in SQL Server

Seth Siegal asked in the Suggestion Box: What is the best practice for searching large table in mixed languages. Context is SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005. The problem is storing in a single column character data from mixed languages and then providing Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 29, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

The parts of AP

There is an old joke you have probably heard some version of: One day a blonde decided that she was sick of all the "Dumb Blonde" jokes people were telling. She decided she would show everyone that blondes really were smart and set out to learn the capitol Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 2:59 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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Localisation via Wiki?

(UK spelling of localization in the title a nod to our friends on the other side of the puddle!) It was as long as six months ago and as recently as yesterday that people have asked me how I would feel about specific posts or perhaps even the whole blog Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 10:50 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Approaching linguiticalishnessality?

I took most of Friday off (I ended up putting in a few hours for a small keyboard snafu and answered a question or two while I was there, but otherwise it was a day off). I decided to go and see a linguistics talk being given over at the University of Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

Some scenarios are too big to cover

As you might imagine, these days I get a lot of email from people in different groups at Microsoft about all kinds of internationalization issues. Usually they are polite, but some of them can be demanding at times! Now while it is true that I have a Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

The font known as 'MS Sans Serif'

Loyal SIAO reader Serge Wautier just posted about MS Sans Serif . In the post he talked about this font a bit, saying: The problem is that this font supports the Western European code page only.When one adds an Eastern European language such as Polish, Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

Custom encodings in Word?

Ivan Petrov asked in the Suggestion Box: Hi Michael. When I open a text file in Microsoft Office Word, Word attempts to detect the encoding standard used for text in the file. Word can automatically detect most encoding standards. When the file's encoding Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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A bit about Marlett

Did you know that some of the graphics used in Windows are not actually graphics but are instead represented as symbols in a font? It is true. And that font's name is Marlett. From its own description, as found in the TrueType Font Properties Extension Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2006 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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ISO 8601 redux

The other day, colleague Shawn Steele posted in his blog about the ISO 8601 Week of Year format in Microsoft .Net , which explains how to work around the fact that we do not exactly support the standard in our implementation. And some readers may recall Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2006 1:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

MSKLC and 64-bit

PaulGor asked in the Suggestion Box: Sorry, could not find a way to write this comment on the existing KLC-related page at http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/09/15/467594.aspx Here is the question: apparently MS KLC does not work correctly under Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments
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'right' does not always equal 'smart' #1

I can think of one crucial scenario where the right behavior is not always what is conventionally considered the smart behavior by reasonable people. That scenario is appcompat/backcompat. The code may be doing something that is completely wrong and weird, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 25, 2006 12:46 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

A bit about the WM_IME_CHAR message

Ben Bryant asked in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup: I am getting mixed messages about what code page is given to a WM_IME_CHAR handler in an ANSI build. I would like to assume its the default system locale code page (GetACP), Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Invariant is a really good choice (any time there is no better choice)

The title quote was said by the most famous person to ever write a post for this blog. :-) It came up earlier today when someone was asking about InvariantCulture (names changes to protect the guilty): I found a good summary on string comparisons and Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Novantrone doesn't work for everyone

(Nothing technical in this post, sorry!) I have been getting some interesting email and other communication from people since I have talked about taking Novantrone. Some of it is very supportive and talks about how they think I have a really positive Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments
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It is not just the good SQL queries that have trouble, sometimes

It was way back in March of 2005 that I talked about a class of problems in a post entitled When good SQL queries have trouble . In that post I contrasted the behavior of SQL Server and the behavior of .NET and I made the claim that SQL Server would never Read More...
Posted Monday, January 23, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Questions about font linking, etc.

It seems like every time I turn around there is another question about font linking. Like this one from the Suggestion Box from Mike Lippert: I'm definitely interested in a font linking follow-up post. In particular I was trying to figure out why on my Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 22, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments
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Adding a new blog category?

I have been asked by a few people in email why I don't have a fonts or typography category. I have actually been resistant to that, since although the area frankly fascinates the hell out of me, my lack of expertise on some of the important basics about Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 21, 2006 8:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments
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Return of the Mark

Well, the RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK (and its cousin the LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK), that is! (apologies to those of you hoping for a clever play on words with Mark Morrison or his song 'Return of the Mack') I talked about the former in Just when you think you know Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 21, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Getting the characters in a code page (the code)

Just recently I posted about Getting the Characters in a Code Page , and described what I thought was the best solution: #3 -- Once again take everything in the Unicode BMP (0x0000 to 0xFFFF), and again use WideCharToMultiByte , but this time make use Read More...
Posted Friday, January 20, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 22 Comments

What are directional marks -- chumps who point?

Earlier today in the post Just when you think you know a function... I talked about the secret way to use two U+200f (RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK) characters in the MessageBox function to put MB_RTLREADING flag behavior in the hands of localizers, where it may Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 19, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments

Just when you think you know a function...

Since the earliest days of Win32, there has been the MessageBox function. And one would think after having so many years to play with it, I would have figured everything out about it. But I did learn something new today about it. There is a particular Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

What do U+0223 and U+0657 have in common?

Two somewhat random characters: U+0223 " ȣ " LATIN SMALL LETTER OU U+0657 " ٗ " ARABIC INVERTED DAMMA Let's see what they have in common: They are both in Unicode. Neither one is in the versions of Tahoma font that have shipped. Both of them are in the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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Digits -- there is no substitute

I have kind of talked about digit substitution now and again since I started with this blog . And I went on and on about the impressive model for the future in the Is Whidbey's international support finished? post, and after all the work was done in Whidbey Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Getting the language of Office

Sunil Virami asked in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup: Hi, Is it possible to find out which language version of MS office is installed on the current system. i.e whether it is japanese office, english office, chinese office Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2006 2:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

They don't make Null Glyphs like they used to!

Warning #1: if you do not have Palatino Linotype on your machine then most of this post is wasted on you. Warning #2: If you are not the kind of person entertained by the sorts of things that a person like me would like, it is probably wasted on YOU too. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2006 1:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments
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Inaccurate localization can cause problems

It's true -- inaccurate localization can cause all sorts of problems. Take this street sign in North Wales: (the Welsh sentence below can be translated into the English sentence ' PEDESTRIANS LOOK LEFT ') You can read about it here . And maybe after that Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Tableaux de caractères Unicode 4.1.0 en français!

That is right, the Unicode Consortium now has the Unicode 4.1 character charts in French! The release from Unicode explains it better than I could, so I will quote it here (in English and French): Unicode 4.1.0 Character Charts in French ======================================== Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Just one code point for SGCAPS....

Fred Jones asked in the Suggestion Box: In MSKLC I can only add a single unicode codepoint to the SGCAP + <key> field. Is this intentional or a bug? If intentional...why? It is indeed intentional, though not through an attempt on our part to be Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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Installable language components in Internet Explorer

The other day, someone with the handle of ox asked in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup: how to check in my code if a kind of language pack installed. For example, on english version winxp, while you access a Chinese website, Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 15, 2006 5:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Falling over the edge of a conceptual collation cliff

With a blog title like Sorting It All Out I make no bones about my somewhat obsessive interest in collation. Well, this is unapologetically one of those interesting collation posts. :-) You may recall if you are a regular reader that I have mentioned Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 15, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Getting out of the compatibility zone, redux

Peter from Belgium sent me the following question: Hi Kaplan, I have a problem. I have an array with unicode characters. These characters are the standalone characters from Maroc. I'm looking for a function where i can put in the standalone characters Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 14, 2006 5:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Brother, can you spare a time[zone]?

Ishan Bhalla asked in the microsoft.public.dotnet.internationalization newsgroup: Hello everyone, Is there any framework or API function i can use to get the date and time of any city in the world? Basically our server is based in Sydney and we need to Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 14, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Some date conversions are evil in other ways

One of the very first posts I ever did in this blog was 'Evil date parsing', Parse, and ParseExact . In it I talked about the heritage of evil date parsing that dated all the way back to early versions of Visual Basic. The method of simply trying to fit Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 12:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 26 Comments

It can be custom OR it can be internationally appropriate

I think the title says it best -- you can make it something custom OR you can make it internationally appropriate. But you really can't do both. The other day someone asked about supporting several custom formats for a calendar, such as ones with month Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

What is the name of that character?

To date, I haven't spent very much time in the MSDN Forums. Not that they are not cool or anything like that. I think that the work that Josh Ledgard and others have put into the setup and that so many community members have put into answering questions Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:03 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 21 Comments
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The creation of sort keys does not always make sense

I have talked a lot about sort keys in the past, like in this post and this one . They are pretty cool from a conceptual standpoint, but they do have one flaw that I was just reminded of the other day. They can actually take up a hell of a lot of space. Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:03 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

It doesn't sound like Yoghurt

Simon Daniels pointed me at an article entitled Why is Menzies pronounced Mingis? It is about Ȝ , also known as YOGH. Simon suggested it might be interesting for two reasons: It is one of the many characters being added to the core fonts for Vista; If Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments
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Collation != Case (a.k.a. Collation <> Case)

Ian Young asked the following question recently: There seems to be a discrepancy in SQL Server in the way case is treated between the UPPER(), LOWER() functions and case-sensitive comparisons. I would have thought that the following should produce no Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 6:51 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

SIAO -- where lies become truth!

Hugh just posted about the Top Ten Blogger Lies . Maybe they are lies when some people say these things, but I am struck by how true the statements all are, to me at least.... Here is the list. Hugh's comments are struck out gray and mine are RED. 1. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 5:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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More on cursor support: the rest of the answer

Ok, several people took up the challenge I suggested in More on cursor support: in Bidi, intuition can be a four letter word once I gave a hint in More on cursor support: half of the answer! Before that, all of the guesses had been by email and none of Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 6:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

More on cursor support: half of the answer!

Ok, earlier today in the post More on cursor support: in Bidi, intuition can be a four letter word , I posted a problem. I have gotten some offline email and some guesses that gave as many as three non- contiguous selection areas, but no one who has yet Read More...
Posted Monday, January 09, 2006 11:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments

More on cursor support: in Bidi, intuition can be a four letter word

It was just over a week ago that I posted more about cursor movement . In the comments, a protracted discussion about Bidi support on Windows and whether the support for cursor movement and selection was "intuitive". If you ask me, intuition is a four Read More...
Posted Monday, January 09, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Is the Jet no longer invisible?

Jebin asked me via the 'Contacting Me' link: I look at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ese/ese/extensible_storage_engine_error_codes.asp and compared it to your warning values from http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2005/10/19/482694.aspx Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 08, 2006 8:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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How to be un-international

From Found in Translation is the post Filtering Out What You Don't Understand . Basically the following dialog is added: I have to agree that the new Outlook 2003 SP2 option to filter out all email from a specific top level domain could be on a tab labeled Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 08, 2006 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 19 Comments

Miscellany and things even less relevant

(Nothing technical in this post) There was a movie I was thinking about yesterday called At First Sight . It starred Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino. Val plays Virgil, a blind man who has an operation to try to regain his sight. I had trouble (when I first Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 07, 2006 8:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Getting the characters in a code page

In the Suggestion Box, rob asked the following question: Michael, As posted over at Raymond Chen's blog. What is the best way to display all the characters in i.e. codepage 932 (Japanese) and other codepage that is supported on Windows (post win2k era). Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 07, 2006 7:20 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

If it's not in Unicode, don't expect it in Windows

I was reminded the other day of a scene from News Radio where a woman was telling David Foley about how " That's ironic. You know, like rain on your wedding day? ", to which Dave replied " No, that's not ironic; that's unfortunate. " It also reminded Read More...
Posted Friday, January 06, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

When not to use MLang

Just yesterday, Raymond Chen was talking about Converting between LCIDs and RFC 1766 language codes . He was basically showing how to use MLang's GetRfc1766FromLcid method to do the conversions between these two items. Under ordinary circumstances I would Read More...
Posted Friday, January 06, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Keyboards over Terminal Server

Ilya Constantinov asked in the Suggestion Box: Remote Desktop seems to have an undocumented behavior of passing on your current keyboard layout (at time of connection) to be installed on the server you're connecting to. This sort-of makes sense, especially Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 05, 2006 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments