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June 2008 - Posts

Thirdly, aka Forty two, aka Understanding the answer can require a properly defined question

Continuing on with the third of all point from A whole new spin on the term 'Vertical markets' (aka in SiaO we trust?) , the one that had not much to do with typography but was a bit more all-encompasing.... And much more to do with me personally than Read More...
Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 12:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Behold the Table Driven Text Service, Part 12 (The knights who say நீ, redux, #2)

Prior posts in the series: 0 (You have to start somewhere) 1 (Starting with a dictionary simple in every way) 2 (Three ways to convert!) 3 (Where do keystrokes come in?) 4 (Specifying when to modify, if not how) 5 (All about the language, baby!) 6 (it Read More...
Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Give people their SPACE, and most of the time they still go with the defaults

In general, people will follow the defaults more often than they will override them. The simple fact of human nature and how humans relate to software is why stuff like I talked about in What it means to be in the default install ends up being so effective Read More...
Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Did someone break GetTimeZoneInformation in XP?

Kim Gräsman asks via the Contact link: Subject: GetTimeZoneInformation changed on XP? Hi Michael, I haven't been following your blog closely, but I was recommended on a newsgroup to ask y ou about this. Hopefully you can help me out, or direct me to someone Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 29, 2008 10:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

If they say "it's all relative" then remind them it is not a coincidence that there is a show called Relative Madness on TV

Sometimes the question you ask will have different answers depending on who you ask. Like previously when I described (in the blogs entitled IsCharSomethingOrOther? and Is Kana 'alphabetic' ? Depends on who you ask.... ), where the answer would vary depending Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 29, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

She actually said Playing, not Praying...

Nothing technical, feel free to pass, you know the drill... Last night was not according to plan. I kind of got stood up. Well, not exactly. We had sort of made plans but we're both pretty busy so this kind of thing happens. The upshot, I ended up spending Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 28, 2008 1:16 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Sorting it all Out a forgery?, aka Cretan or cretan?

Just kidding, this blog is completely written by me and none of it is a forgery, except in the sense that I sometimes forge it out of my imagination (which is something very different). But yesterday over on The Unicode List, John Hudson stirred up a Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 28, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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How does it work? It cheats, that's how!

The question developer Cynthia sent via the Contact link was a fun one: How can I program the "Fn" key on my laptop keyboard via MSKLC? The answer is that you really can't. Because the Fn or Function key has a very special job -- its job is to cheat. Read More...
Posted Friday, June 27, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Adding keys to your layout when you don't know what they are (aka Life with a 108-key keyboard layout)

Robert asked via the Contact link: Dear Mr. Kaplan, I just found an interesting story on your blog, namely http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2006/09/26/771554.aspx . I own a Japanese Windows Vista laptop, it has the typical Japanese Laptop Layout Read More...
Posted Friday, June 27, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Using one Unicode input method at a time (Using the Unicode IME on XP)

So back in the beginning of 2008, Harold Fuchs (in response to my Typing in random Unicode code points blog from almost 2.5 years prior, asked over in the Suggestion Box: The method you described in May 2005 ("Typing in random Unicode code points") for Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 26, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

I am not engaged, everyone!

I will readily admit I am not much of a texter. I said as much to someone who was texting me late last year: Do you text message? It's what young people do these days. Nothing makes you feel older than phrases like that, I always say.... Unfortunately, Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 26, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Seeing the tears, my heart went out to her as I asked her "Why the Long S?"

Over the last few years, quite a few of my blogs have mentioned the LCMAP_LINGUISTIC_CASING flag for LCMapString: December 2004: The [Upper]Case of the Turkish İ (or: Casing, the 2nd) December 2004: What does "linguistic casing" mean? April 2005: When Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

So logical that even Mr. Spock (and my fiancée?) would approve

Regular readers may recall having seen the blog entitled Somehow I just get a Visual of the Logical Song (as sung by Supertramp) a few months ago. Not everyone is convinced fully, just yet. So I thought I'd add some more information to the mix.... Let's Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Everyone knows that SID, he is a laugh riot

Here is thst big list of well-known SIDs, the bulk of which are localizable and a significant number of which are localized. Note that not all of them are necessarily going to be useful for your program, or even for any program. But with knowledge comes Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 24, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Is the Root of all evil the lawyers?

If you don't watch or at least want to watch Lewis Black's Root of All Evil , you can probably skip this blog (and come to think of it, you may want to skip this Blog in that case, as well!)... Lewis Black is incredibly funny. He really is. So far his Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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"It makes total sense when you explain that the Turks have four eyes", aka Transcripts are hard, let's go shopping!

So regular readers might remember the recent blog entitled "It makes total sense when you explain that the Turks have four I's" . Dale then commented : Oh, the transcript of the podcast is better: "It makes total sense when you explain that the Turks Read More...
Posted Monday, June 23, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

The hazards of appropriate cleanup

There was a mail thread that happened recently on one of those "if you aren't a fulltime employee then why the hell are you here?" kind of aliases, one that I belong to because by following along the problems (and occasionally looking at the remotes) Read More...
Posted Monday, June 23, 2008 12:46 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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The oversimplified world of facebook

One funny thing about facebook is that there are pages for celebrities. You know, famous people. The pages provide info about appearances and such and if one follows and if one is a fan of the famous person, then this is very useful information.... Now Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2008 9:37 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Meanwhile over in Colemakville

Colemak devotees -- please control your enthusiasm; comments that get overly preachy will never be posted (as this is my pulpit, not yours!).... The keyboard without a Caps Lock key that has come up now and again here in posts like this one and this one Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 22, 2008 8:29 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Back to Sri Lanka (conceptually)

I've been blogging about Sinhalese keyboard on and off for some time. Like in November of 2005 when in Custom keyboard, custom language? I bemoaned the lack of ability to extend the language list in MSKLC 1.3, which blocked Madhava Temmakoon's efforts Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 21, 2008 9:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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Doing a thorough brushing of the gift horse's teeth

So I was given a 4 GB Zune, and I do think that is very cool (how I got this is really beyond the scope of this blog). But I discovered something really interesting. If you look at all of the music I have, between commercial CDs and bootlegs and online Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 21, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 9 Comments
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Long Live Nancy DAVolio, and DAV!

I've always had a soft spot for Nancy Davolio. One of the fictional employees from the Northwind Traders sample database that shipped with Access for so long, she was just synmbolic of something that I can't fully explain that I liked about Micrsoft Access Read More...
Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
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What's black and white, and Chinese all over?

Charles Riley (a Unicode colleague from Yale) posted a link to In South Africa, Chinese is the New Black . As I went through the ups and downs of the article, I didn't know what to think. I wondered about the notions that came into play -- being able Read More...
Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

How do[es what] the common controls [call ]convert between ANSI and Unicode?

The other day, Raymond Chen blogged about How do the common controls convert between ANSI and Unicode? , in response to a question in his suggestion box: In the context of an ansi (not unicode) app: How do the common controls (listview for example) decide Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Accelerator vs. Shortcut, revisited

In the before time, in the long long ago, when this blog was first finding its voice, I blogged two blogs: Accessibility, Internationalization, and Keyboards (#1: Shortcuts) Accessibility, Internationalization, and Keyboards (#2: Accelerators) And a recent Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

The 'honor' of being #523 out of 5486

So yesterday via the Contact link, I got the following mail: Dear Michael Kaplan, Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.3 score out of (10) in the Technology category of Blogged.com. This is quite an achievement! http://www.blogged.com/directory/technology Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Meiryo? (Windows XP edition)

Apologies for the Sound of Music allusion! Via the Contact link, tiwunster asked me: Hi I have a question regarding the changing of default East Asian fonts. Recently Microsoft has release East Asian ClearType fonts for Windows XP. I've installed all Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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It isn't Unicode yet?

Microsoft program manager Garrett McGowan mentioned yesterday: Please compile Audiosurf as a Unicode application. Surely the game isn't supported on Win9x? Around 15 percent of my music collection is unavailable in the game because the album and song Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Questions: 7, Question Marks: 0 (aka The Zeroeth post about Dialog Units)

Ian Boyd asked over in the Suggestion Box: Dialog Units. What they were designed to do. Where they would have hopefully worked. How it is they originally did work. When they began to break down. The workaround used to try to keep them working. How they Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Sometimes, GDI respects users (even if no one else does!)

Regular readers know how I am always encouraging, cajoling, and sometimes even threatening developers to respect the user's locale settings choices. Not everyone is of a mind to do this, however.... Like just the other day when someone was sending me Read More...
Posted Monday, June 16, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

I Didn't Start Something

The mail I got yesterday morning at 12:43 AM was interesting: Hope you are enjoying fathers day. If you haven't seen Long's site on UX. http://www.istartedsomething.com/taskforce/index.php here are some suggestions that may be cannon fodder for the blog:) Read More...
Posted Monday, June 16, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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Me and Facebook (and I)

When I was at TechEd I found myself in a conversation with some people about Facebook and how into each of us were. Afterward, one of those people (who used to be on Facebook but has since then left) suggested I write this blog. So here goes.... I am Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 15, 2008 11:59 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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On the [pragmatic?] pronunciation of "XXX"

One of the particular points of pride I have as a "blogger" is the interesting cross-section of readers I have. Recently, an occasional reader sent me a note via the Contact link with three interesting data points: She knew of the movie I talked about Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 15, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Reliving life in the time before ASCII?

Over in the Suggestion Box, regular reader Jan Kučera asks: The other day, I was thinking... what would have Michael done differently, if there was no ASCII yet? If he could design encoding from scratch given all he knows today? I still have some doubts Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 14, 2008 1:19 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Not labled for individual retail sale, aka On feeling comfortably uncomfortable

Nothing technical, why are you bothering, you know the drill.... The other night Andrea and I had another of those phone calls we have from time to time.... Andrea : I was reading through your blog the other day, and I was curious why you claimed that Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 14, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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"It makes total sense when you explain that the Turks have four I's"

I am on Hanselminutes once again, good old number #117. (I mentioned Hanselminutes previously in posts like this one ). Scott and I blather about internationalization, localization, and more for a half hour or so, you can listen to Hanselminutes #117 Read More...
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 1:59 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

the front of my mind (by which I mean the back of my mind) is on the middle of my mind

This blog represents an arid squallor of non-technical associative linkage, written by somebody who may as well have been stoned the whole time (or at least some part of it) though in reality he (by which I mean I) wasn't, an it wouldn't have actually Read More...
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments
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Truly a font of absolute last resort

At long last, after considerable back and forth and hemming and hawing, Apple has made their Last Resort font available, and you can get it here . Of course Mac OS X has had this for some time, but now it is available for everyone else.... You can tell Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

The SID, and the name, and the SID

Yesterday in You almost want a cease-and-desist order put out about the docs I talked about my strong feelings about documentation topics like Setting Up Windows Service Accounts (and in particular its section entitled Localized Service Names ). And in Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

MATTER SIZES, aka Knowing when to unflip a[n inappropriately flipped] bozo bit

The source of the main title is an inside joke I am probably not going to ever explain within the blog. Regular readers are encouraged to use their imaginations. :-) It has been quite a while since I first blogged in An opportunity to start down the right Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 11, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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You almost want a cease-and-desist order put out about the docs

Regular readers may well remember previous blog posts like Administrator vs. Administrateur, et. al. and What's in a name? (once more) . It would seem that one cannot even find a week going by without someone looking at documentation topics like Setting Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 11, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Gee -- No, G.E. -- No, GE (Ґ), aka The good guys can win in the end

Early last year in the blog What's wrong with the Ukrainian keyboard layout, anyway? I wrote about a new keyboard layout that was added to help correct longstanding problems with the old layout. The sponsorship of the blog was in fact one of the formerly Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

When Unicode's "PDF" character isn't supported, you really *can* say that the app's Bidi support doesn't POP!

The problem that came in was an interesting one: Win32 application running on Windows XP (Hebrew language); Rich edit control in the application; Try to display the folder path in left - to - right (i.e. in the form of C:\<Hebrew folder name>.txt, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

Did you lose some WIDTH or something?

The question from a friend was straightforward enough (name withheld to avoid unnecessary embarrassment!): ASCIIS don’t have half width versions, do they? Are the full/width distinction also only applicable to Japanese characters? I was momentarily confused Read More...
Posted Monday, June 09, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

But What of Michael?

Apologies to Piers Anthony for the title allusion; the post has nothing to do with whatever you probably think it implies! Back in late September of 2000, a book I wrote was first released entitled Internationalization with Visual Basic. The ISBN of the Read More...
Posted Monday, June 09, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

"I work in Windows, but for this conference I'm here for SQL Server...."

I am back home in Redmond after an exciting week in sunny Orlando, most of the time spent at Tech·Ed.... The total cost for me was nothing -- $75 and some miles (as I pointed out before ). I would have stayed for the second week too -- if only to see Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 08, 2008 3:59 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Just so there is no misunderstanding

My group did not fund my trip to Orlando. Well to be completely technical, since I flew with a rewards ticket on Alaska, and since almost all of my Alaska miles post breakup with the two women who lived in LA and North Hollywood respectively have been Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 03, 2008 6:39 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments
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Lost in [no ]translation

Just the other day, some localizers were asking a question about some web content about globalization that was talking about Arabic script characters: Question: In order to transliterate properly into the target languages, we'd like to confirm the letters Read More...
Posted Monday, June 02, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

One keyboard to rule them all?

Mariano asks via the Contact link: Hi Michael! I taught myself to type Dvorak and love it. However, I have a lot of problems when I play video games. Take your typical FPS, where you use (WASD) to move. In Dvorak, this is (,AOE). Games like Crysis recognize Read More...
Posted Monday, June 02, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

On passive vocabulary (aka ennui about chaos)

I used to read a lot. Well, technically I still do. But these days I read specs and standards and blogs; what I used to read was books. It gave me lots of things, but the thing I'm thinking about here is the huge passive vocabulary I ended up with. All Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 01, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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Seeing through the non-English "Mesh"

When I saw the name of this particular technology ( Live Mesh ), I admit that the image it inspired was probably not the one the team specifically intended 1,2 . But I have had a few people who had been following blogs up on the Live Mesh Blog such as: Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 01, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
 
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