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December 2006 - Posts

Converting a Project to Unicode: Part 4 (It's /Delightful, it's /Delicious, it's /DUnicode!)

Previous posts in this series (including today's!): Part 0 (The introduction) Part 1 (Business before pleasure) Part 2 ('Sorry, you're not my type.' 'Um, maybe I could change that?) Part 3 (Can I quote you on that?) Part 4 (/Delightful, /Delicious, /DUnicode!) Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 31, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

More on our non-Unicode heritage

As the year 2006 draws to a close and as I set my sites on what applications I need to try to get on the ball about Unicode support over the next two to five years, I realized a major impediment to this goal. I'll blame a fellow Technical Lead who shall Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 31, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

PM agrees -- 'supporting Aero' does not mean we have to start flying (or get high by any other means)

So the question Gary (the Program Manager on the MSKLC update ) asked me was: Are we planning on updating the UI to be Vista UX guidelines compliant? Luckily he provided me with a[n internal] link so I would know what he was talking about! :-) I think Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 11:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Converting a project to Unicode: Part 3 (Can I quote you on that?)

Previous posts in this series (including today's!): Part 0 (The introduction) Part 1 (Business before pleasure) Part 2 ('Sorry, you're not my type.' 'Um, maybe I could change that?) Part 3 (Can I quote you on that?) (If you are just tuning in and want Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

The candidates might have two dimensions (at least!)

Back in early October, Yao Ziyuan (a.k.a. 'Booted Cat') posted a suggestion for Microsoft in the microsoft.public.word.international.features newsgroup. Although I believe the suggestion has indeed been forwarded on appropriately, the message is about Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 30, 2006 12:10 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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My New Year's Resolutions

My New Year's Resolutions for 2007 (an intentionally more positive version than the ones I posted in 2005 and of course better than 2006 when I posted nothing!): I resolve to have resolve; I promise to be more promising; I swear I will try to stop swearing; Read More...
Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 11:56 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Converting a project to Unicode: Part 2 ('Sorry, you're not my type.' 'Um, maybe I could change that?')

Previous posts in this series (including today's!): Part 0 (The introduction) Part 1 (Business before pleasure) Part 2 ('Sorry, you're not my type.' 'Um, maybe I could change that?) The alternate title of this post is not something I would ever recommend Read More...
Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 14 Comments

By design? Well, not beautifully so....

So the message I got yesterday from someone with the handle IDisposable was: RE: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/03/25/560838.aspx This code doesn't work under Vista mostly because the Language Packs won't install (says they are already there), Read More...
Posted Friday, December 29, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

Converting a project to Unicode: Part 1 (Business before pleasure)

Previous posts in this series (including today's!): Part 0 (The introduction) Part 1 (Business before pleasure) Before we get to jump in and work on code, there are a few items to take care of. Any time the idea of converting an existing project to Unicode Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Changing MUI settings from MUISETUP command line?

The other day Paul asked me: Hi Michael, Been playing around with MUISETUP from XP SP2 (with just Australian English installed), trying to get Japanese installed as the default language. I'm running the following from the command line: muisetup /i 0411 Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 28, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Converting a project to Unicode: Part 0 (The introduction)

It was over a year ago that Jeff D. asked in the Suggestion Box: Michael, What I'd be interested in reading (assuming you haven't already given us one) is a primer on how to go about converting a non-Unicode app to Unicode compliance... for those of us Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 3:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 16 Comments

If you decompose those city elders, you might be able to sort them out!

Clearly the City Elders in Athens and Sparta and Thebes and Argos, being long dead, have decomposed at this point. Now yesterday I posted about how The city elders won't give this string weight, either (aka On being consistently dead wrong, aka Ordinal Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 27, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

The city elders won't give this string weight, either (aka On being consistently dead wrong, aka Ordinal or bust?)

The question Richard Wilson asked me via the contact link: I am having problems with string comparisons with the Unicode Greek Extended characters, and someone suggested writing to you. The thread is http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1049188&SiteID=1 Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 26, 2006 9:40 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

On holiday? Outlook might try to tell you where....

In Open it all up, get out of the way, and then what happens? , I talked about the challenges that my team faces as we add features that we can't always get our clients who use our functionality to pick up. As serious as that problem may be (and cearly Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 26, 2006 12:37 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Anyone out there switching modes in JIS?

The report was that a specific sequence of bytes was failing conversion via code page 50220 to Unicode when using MultiByteToWideChar but succeeding when using MLang . The bug only repros on XP (in Server 2003) the conversion was working in both technologies. Read More...
Posted Monday, December 25, 2006 10:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Maybe your computer doesn't like you?

Back in my younger days, I helped tutor a few classmates who were having problems with our school's TRS-80 machines. In one case I joked that maybe the problems she saw were due to the machine not liking her. Her eyes got big and she asked me whether Read More...
Posted Monday, December 25, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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Running a bit short on space?

The other day in response to It's not right when IsRightToLeft is wrong , regular reader Andrew West asked in a comment after a brief conversation about the layout bits in the FONTSIGNATURE : I know that the Unicode range bits are set in the OS/2 table Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 24, 2006 3:09 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Happy ____________ (fill in the blank whatever you celebrate this time of year)

The problem I have with Chaunkah is a complex issue to describe. It is not because there are 697,000 ways to spell this Hebrew transliterated word into English (after all, thats no fault of the day that no knows how to spell it). It is not because its Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 24, 2006 12:21 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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Despite a report to the contrary, >1000 seems to work

Someone with the handle ano21 sent me via the contact link the following question: Greetings! I created a keyboard with a dead key whose character number is >1000. When the keyboard is compiled, the key no longer works as a dead key; when I hit it, Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 24, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Do not adjust your browser, a.k.a. sometimes two wrongs DO make a right, a.k.a. dumb quotes

(The first part of the title is meant to be an allusion to The Outer Limits and the narration of the Control Voice, which is what I thought of when the inspiration for this post presented itself!) The other day I was looking at a web site and it contained Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 23, 2006 3:03 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Vista turns on everything

The question that came in was: Hello All, Does anyone tell me how to turn off advanced text services in Windows Vista? It's funny but I feel like I have spent nearly 50 years this past half decade answering the opposite question -- how to make sure that Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 23, 2006 12:58 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Sometimes when sorting the index is the last thing you want to use

The other day, in response to my post Don't get into the zone too soon.... , reader Kevin Dente asked in a comment : >not that people were scared off by the lack of documentation >here in the past! Hmm, yes, it turns out one of our products falls Read More...
Posted Friday, December 22, 2006 7:15 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Thumb twiddling?

I feel like I have been lax on the blog lately, not putting as much time into it as I usually do. But then, there was this whole problem with the windstorm and the power outage. And that put my work behind a few days. And work has also been busy. I'll Read More...
Posted Friday, December 22, 2006 3:05 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

It's not just ordinary script, dude -- it' superscript!

The mail I got via the contact link from arya said: Hello Sir, I hope this finds you well. There is something that is driving me crazy. We want to dynamically superscript numbers in excel. We can only do this for superscript 1,2,3 using the CODE() funcition. Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 21, 2006 9:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

It's not right when IsRightToLeft is wrong

Yesterday in the post For the [locale] explorer in you.... , I mentioned that there was a bug. Francois is actually the person who saw it, and he came and asked me about it.... The bug can be seen in the picture of the Uighur (PRC) culture (ug-CN): Can Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

The message queue runneth over, and may not be in sync

So last night Aaron Margosis (who you may recall I have mentioned before here ) asked about a question over in Raymond Chen 's suggestion box to both Raymond and I, and added a question of his own. Raymond was gracious enough to cede jurisidiction for Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2006 12:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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For the [locale] explorer in you....

One of the big problems with presenting about locales, for example the updated ones in Vista, is that they can be hard to demo -- I mean, how can you show them all, or show what is in each one? In many prior posts and in MSDN Magazine articles and presentations. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 20, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Where are the per-user keyboard layouts?

Reader Lionel Fourquaux asked me: I was mentioning MSKLC to a fellow student who complained that he couldn't get his usual keyboard configuration on Windows, when I realized that on one point he was perfectly right to complain: since MSKLC install a system-wide Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 19, 2006 8:51 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Don't get into the zone too soon....

Yesterday when I finally got a chance to look at mail I found the following in my inbox: Michael, The following is from a post in the microsoft.public.vc.language managed newsgroup; I wasn't sure where else to put it. A person by the name of Jochen Kalmbach Read More...
Posted Monday, December 18, 2006 10:13 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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WinForms != WebForms

The question Peter asked was: Is there a DateTime Difference on WinForm and WebForm? I write a simply code to see the difference: this.label1.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString(); this.label1.Text += " " + System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.ToString(); Read More...
Posted Monday, December 18, 2006 12:03 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Technical Lead's Personal Log: Stardate {what time is it?}

Ok, in the time since I posted Technical Lead's Personal Log: Stardate unknown , I have learned a few things: When my power was back on for a few seconds on Friday night, some parts of the Cambrian were back on completely; A tree fell on a building and Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 17, 2006 11:51 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Search and you shall find (if the content provider doesn't screw up!)

There are some things about MSDN links that are weird, and hard to use, and maybe even a problem internationally, to boot. Let me explain.... There are currently two main kinds of MSDN links. As an example I will use CurrentUICulture, to show you what Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 17, 2006 3:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Thinking about MUI is making me bipolar

Speaking of Open it all up, get out of the way, and then what happens? .... There are times while I am at work where I occasionally think about how my emotional state keeps going up and down like crazy. Like first I am really pleassed about something Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 16, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

Technical Lead's Personal Log: Stardate unknown

(Apologies for the title, it was inspired by the Captain's logs from the Star Trek episode that gave Spock a beard!) So I am sitting in my apartment, typing a blog post into Windows Live Writer. A post which I cannot of course upload into the blog, since Read More...
Posted Friday, December 15, 2006 4:08 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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Sometimes both the question and the answer can suck

Some questions that people may ask are good indications that the person asking is about to be making a mistake. Like if someone asks how one might build a bomb, the question sucks for all kinds of reasons. And the ready availability of the answer also Read More...
Posted Friday, December 15, 2006 12:18 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

Pretty damn close to top of the line

Anyway, it wasn't too long ago that I got that dream laptop, a Dell Precision M90. They kind of screwed up the order a bit (it came installed with the x86 version of Windows XP SP2 when I had ordered the 64-bit version, and the folks in support did not Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 14, 2006 5:56 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 11 Comments
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In the new MSDN Magazine -- Unicode and Microsoft, and Vista

Now up is the January issue of MSDN Magazine , a special Vista issue that includes an article by Julie D. Allen (Senior Editor and Project Manager with the Unicode Consortium), Cathy Wissink (Group Program Manager for Microsoft), and yours truly. :-) Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 14, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

Sometimes what a person really wants is a LACK of size

Over the time I have had this blog, I have often had occasion to say nice things about work that the Shell team does. One of the main reasons for this is a particular characteristic that its members tend to have, one where if there is not an easy way Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 4:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 18 Comments
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Converting doubles to Unicode strings

The question Andy asked: Are there no wide-character methods of converting a double to a string? I see methods to convert wide strings to doubles (e.g. _wtof) but not the reverse. He is 100% correct -- there is no CRT function (safe or otherwise) that Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 13, 2006 3:45 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 15 Comments

Virtual Aimee Mann appearances

When Aimee Mann is going to be doing a performance on television or online, I tend to get a whole bunch of mail from people who want to make sure I am being kept informed. I thought I'd make sure everyone knew about some of these upcoming events.... WOXY.COM: Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 12, 2006 11:56 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Open it all up, get out of the way, and then what happens?

When I posted Subsets of subsets of subsets of subsets of subsets , I didn't talk about an interesting side effect that we have as a team, being on the bottom this pyramid of "number of locales supported." The problem, simply stated, is that generally Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 12, 2006 7:34 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 12 Comments

Sorting numbers as text AND as digits

It's funny, but the past few years whenever I have had to fly I have noticed (whether sitting in my scooter or sitting in a wheelchair) that people in the airport are really not paying very much attention where they are going. I m not sure what it is, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, December 12, 2006 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

IsComplexEnoughForYou?

There are a whole bunch of people both inside and outside of Microsoft who have gotten good use out of that GetDateFormat Tarek put together that I mentioned before in Cue the smarter version of GetDateFormat... ok, it's a wrap! . The other day, one of Read More...
Posted Monday, December 11, 2006 3:53 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

The Romanian keyboard layout on XP is the brokenest layout of all

Technically, the word broken represents an absolute; this means the terms brokener and brokenest are really not words. But they say that it is the exception that proves the rule, and the Romanian keyboard on Windows NT represents the surefire god awful Read More...
Posted Monday, December 11, 2006 7:55 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Don't want to convert all at once? Well, maybe you could just nibble?

So the other day, Snaury asked me: Hi Michael, I found your blog while searching for information on converting between code pages, and thought, maybe you could answer the question I have for a very long time? Today was my first attempt of programming Read More...
Posted Sunday, December 10, 2006 9:30 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

On being consistently consistent, while still managing to be dead wrong

(Apologies to Hughes Mearns for the poetic excerpt that is a revision to his work!) When I thought about the problem several years ago, at the point where I first became involved in the .NET Framework's System.Globalization.CompareInfo class, the poem Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 09, 2006 10:32 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

Update on the update to the update for Romanian and Bulgarian

I heard from Cristian Secară from Romania again not too long ago: Hi Michael, First: thank you for your feedback regarding the Windows Keyboard Layouts page ( your blog on 05 November). Second: Tudor pointed me out, and then read on your blog ( your blog Read More...
Posted Saturday, December 09, 2006 1:56 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 26 Comments

I guess we're not exporting the Zune just yet

I bought a Zune the other day. This is something of a departure for me, as I have not bought a portable music player smaller than a Tablet or laptop since the Walkman I picked up over two decades ago. And generally speaking I don't go for the latest entertainment Read More...
Posted Friday, December 08, 2006 2:13 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 24 Comments

Access and RTL MessageBox ≈ Oil and Water

Some questions, I get more than once, but not often enough for it to occur to me that maybe I should blog about it. One of those questions came to me from Dr. International just the other day, but the first time the question was asked almost two years Read More...
Posted Friday, December 08, 2006 11:19 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Zipping up Unicode file PATHs

Kecia asked: We understand there is a known issue with winzip where it doesn’t work if certain Unicode characters are in the extract path (since the path to the user’s temp directory contains the user name, this issue occurs when a user name contains Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 07, 2006 8:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments

SQL and the CLR: Part 1 (the things we can make work well)

At the beginning of the week I posted Part 0 of this series, so I figured I should start the series at some point. :-) The first and most obvious thing to avoid is any of the SQL Server 2005 *_BIN2 collations. These "new in SQL Server 2005" collations Read More...
Posted Thursday, December 07, 2006 7:53 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Hurry up and make it slower, already!

Some people go crazy about performance -- they want everything to work as fast as possible. But there have been a few projects over the years where great performance actually worked against the interests of the project! I suppose the first time I remember Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 06, 2006 3:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments
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What's wrong with what FxCop does for globalization, Part 0.5 (a segue)

I thought I'd talk about the FxCop issue from a slightly different standpoint, and discuss something that has nothing to do with FxCop