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September 2008 - Posts

The difference between Six Sigma and Sigma Diaresis is one must never fail; the other seems to do so by default

As the regular font ninjas and font experts and font mavens will likely be quick to agree with me about, I am not a font maven, expert, or ninja. But every once in a while I can contribute productively. :-) The other day, over on the VOLT users community Read More...
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

What a tangled web we weave when a KLID from an HKL we must receive

For the title to work best, you have to use the pronunciations from Some keyboarding terms for the terms... In a series of newsgroup posts, Udi Raz asked many related questions: There are two Bengali layouts on XP. I am able to load and activate the Bengali Read More...
Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

I'll start by saying לשנה טובה to everyone who understands what I just @#%&*! said

In this blog I am not speaking for Microsoft or that bar I was in whose name I don't recall or any branch of Judaism or any particular Jew other than myself. And the UMW rule definitely applies for people who ignore this truth! So I was asked a question Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 28, 2008 5:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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On why I think my birthday sucks

A lot of people know I am not a big fan of celebrating my birthday. The whole practice seems kind of silly to me. I had nothing to do with the conception (essentially my move-in date), and the eviction nine months later (well, over nine months -- I was Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 27, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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When Flat is not the Standard, the System is null?

The question to the alias was simple enough: I have an issue dealing with winform button, I want to get the font used by button by sending WM_GETFONT message, if button’s FlatStyle=Standard, it returns NULL, however if button’s FlatStyle=System, it returns Read More...
Posted Friday, September 26, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

You're not my type if you have no culture

This blog is about CultureTypes. The list can be kind of confusing, perhaps even a bit daunting to people. But it all makes sense, if you know where it came from. Thus this blog! The full list of members of the CultureTypes enumeration are: Member name Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

When to make a change, when to stay the same

The roots of this blog run pretty deep. It starts within months of the very beginning of this Blog, with FoldString.NET? No, but Whidbey has Normalization (which is kinda more cooler) , where the fact that the NLS API function FoldString , which predates Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 25, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

It used to be right, dammit!

The GetDateFormat function from the NLS API has been around for a while. Like since NT 3.5 and Windows 95. The documentation for this function has of course been expanded and modified and edited many times since it was initially added to the Platform Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Tavultesoft is one of the company names mispronounced more often than Trigeminal

Regular readers may recall that I have mentioned Marc Durdin in the past, especially in posts like the recent The key to key messages is a key contribution , where I went on for a bit about the fact he impresses me professionally.... I also enjoyed the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

As the comma turned (in space!)

Unicode List regular Karl Pentzlin wrote to the list the other day: On http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/release/iau0807/ , the IAU (International Astronomical Union) publishes a press release of 2008-09-17 "IAU names fifth dwarf planet Haumea". There, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 23, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Survey says? Nine Inch Wails!

Nothing that is even familiar with something vaguely reminiscent of anything vaguely technical.... So one of those interesting mails from the Nine Inch Nails mailing list included information about a survey they wanted some people to take, which included Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 23, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments
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A lot of problems to enumerate...

The question (asked over in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup) was: I think there is something fundamental that I missing about the CompareString API. Distilling a lot of confusion, I have an example where something like... Read More...
Posted Monday, September 22, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Michael hasn't worn pants in months

I recently had an epiphany, about some of the ultra-fast communication technologies such as TEXT'ing and Twitter (aka blogs for the ADHD). It came up because I was having dinner with someone who happens to be a big twitterer. My exact words were along Read More...
Posted Monday, September 22, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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The Company Meeting, the interesting science of Forensic Typography, and what happened after

So a few days ago, I was at the Microsoft Company Meeting. Nothing I haven't done before, mind you. Regular readers might even remember when I have blogged about it previously (eg here ). This time, I figured I've actually been doing the 545 bus into Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 21, 2008 1:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Sorting the Vowels all Out

The other day in Sorting the DPRK all Out , I mentioned: Let's ignore the vowels for a moment, I'll talk about those another time (I have different linguistic theories to draw in for them!). Well, it is officially time to stop ignoring the vowels. :-) Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 21, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

How to miss the point through translation (and on italicizing, or not)

It was a little more than two years ago in When the font is the boss of you that I talked about how the ClearType font Meiryo took the battle between people who try to italicize Japanese text and people who think that this makes Japanese really really Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 20, 2008 1:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Sorting the DPRK all Out

This blog post is not about trying to "sort out" the political issues in the DPRK -- just the sort, ma'am! In true SiaO fashion, this blog is more information about something Microsoft (and most companies) are not really able to support! Probably the Read More...
Posted Friday, September 19, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

UCS-2 to UTF-16, Part 3: It starts with cursor movement (where MS simultaneously gets better and worse)

Previous blogs in this series of blogs on this Blog: Part 0: The intro, sans content Part 1: Getting the obvious out of the way Part 2: A&P of a 'linguistic character' Okay, so far we have introduced the topic, pointed out that 9/10's of what a person Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 18, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 10 Comments

Behind the Proposed Change to Tamil in Unicode (five different ways)

So, I had that Behind the Proposed Change to Tamil in Unicode presentation: The encoding of Tamil within Unicode has been the subject of displeasure by the government of Tamil Nadu for as long as it has been there. It has led to a proposal (built up over Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

About the people who work for companies, and *their* fonts

On a completely unrelated note, can anything ever be really Wright again now that Rick is gone. :-( People who read my blog from the other day titled About companies and their fonts the other day who know something about fonts on Vista might be torn between Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Vérité (add MUI support in a service pack) ou oser (tell me whether returning 'vrai' was intentional)?

Do French teenagers play "Truth or Dare" while growing up in France? Or is that just an American thing? The actual question seemed innocuous enough. It wasn't: We are noticing that on non-us XPSP3 system, when "Regional and Language Settings" (first tab) Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Is the flaw is in the constructs, or in the one who constructs? (aka I shoulda schwa that one coming)

Over in the Suggestion Box, Gregory asked: Hi Michael, I stumbled across a piece of code that implements a .NET HttpModule to remove whitespace and other junk from pages as you hit them (as can be seen here ). Speaking purely about encoding issues in Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

UCS-2 to UTF-16, Part 2: A&P of a 'linguistic character'

Previous blogs in this series of blogs on this Blog: Part 0: The intro, sans content Part 1: Getting the obvious out of the way A&P in the title stands for Anatomy and Physiology, since in some alternate universe I went ahead and got a medical degree Read More...
Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Hi, I'm a PC. And I have a MAC. Wait, isn't that backwards? No worries, we're talking Bidi here!

The other kind of MAC, in this case. :-) Another from the list of bugs from that cool presentation from the folks over in Intel localization.... This one is kind of about Bidi. Wait. Scratch that. It is all about Bidi. First some info from Loïc describing Read More...
Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

About companies and their fonts

Over in the Suggestion Box, Chris Nichols suggested and opined: From the comments in response to your post About the Fonts folder in Windows, Part 3 (aka What changes in Vista?) , it seems that there are some things to be desired in the way that Vista Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 14, 2008 11:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Johab to be kidding me!

From the list of bugs from that cool presentation from the folks over in Intel localization.... The bug? Well, it seemed that Korean was "randomly" not working! By randomly I mean it was not working on some machines but everything was just fine on others. Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 14, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Where the boys aren't garden path sentences

Regular readers (and devoted couple!) Don and Tammy asked via the Suggestion Box: We found another interesting language issue in adult films. This time it is in the title. There is a long-running series from Vivid entitled _Where_the_Boys_Aren't_. As Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 13, 2008 7:01 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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One small step for me, and one big leap for Microsoft?

Okay, I know I promised I was done, but after It is the [unexpected] gratitude from people you respect that makes a [stubborn] Bulldog feels best! , where I mentioned: Rick then said some very nice things and I accepted the award that I think I was too Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 13, 2008 8:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

U+1d31d -- "She's So High" lyrics, as requested

It came about as a result of The issue became moot as I decided to stand mute , when I commented about the songs that I was thinking about singing: Tal Bachman 's She's So High -- the theme was going to be about a Unicode character with a lower number Read More...
Posted Friday, September 12, 2008 8:59 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments

Getting a globe through the airport

So anyhow... You may recall how I won that award the other day . It came in a box. Well, actually, it came as an award. Magda put in a box so as to make taking it home easier. Here is the box: I was thinking about how lucky I was that I couldn't find Read More...
Posted Friday, September 12, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 4 Comments

Best in Show, according to me

I had somebody ask me what I thought was "best in show" at this last IUC that I was at (and whether I thought it was my presentation). No, I explained, my talk was interesting and there are several other interesting issues that could get a lot of benefit Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 11, 2008 2:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 7 Comments

The issue became moot as I decided to stand mute

It was yesterday in It is the [unexpected] gratitude from people you respect that makes a [stubborn] Bulldog feels best! where I mentioned that I was $20 in the trivia contest. Without explaining what I meant. Basically it was part of the evening's excitement, Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 11, 2008 2:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 6 Comments

unundoable would be doubleplusungood way to do ([un]do) it

The other day, reader Harmony7, in response to my blog Unbloggableable: an inconceivableable term that makes me a little uncomfortableable , commented : This might be a bit off-topic, but I always thought the word "undoable" was confusing. The dictionary Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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It is the [unexpected] gratitude from people you respect that makes a [stubborn] Bulldog feels best!

It turns out everybody knew. Rick McGowan had sent me mail a few days ago asking if I would definitely be at the Internationalization and Unicode Conference. I said yes to do my talk. I mean of course I did, I promised I would do the Behind the Proposed Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 10, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 13 Comments

Where is "Tamil - Sri Lanka" exactly?

Kamal asks: Is there way to participate in the discussion of Tamil (Sri Lanka). I mean the regional settings. I would like to participate and contribute if I can. Please direct me. Thank you Truly, Kamal Generally speakng, there are not huge public discussions Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

On installing and removing fonts, Part 8: Sometimes being selfish makes you more trustworthy

The blogs that came before: 0: A long journey begins with the zeroeth step 1: Do I know you, or some version of you at least? 2: Are you done using me yet? 3: I'll love you forever, or at least for this session. 4: The easiest part is the addition! 5: Read More...
Posted Monday, September 08, 2008 3:19 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

UCS-2 to UTF-16, Part 1: Getting the obvious out of the way

Previous blogs in this series of blogs on this Blog: Part 0: The intro, sans content By the end of this series, all of my regular readers or even cursory followers know that I'll be talking you into all kinds of corner cases. Here in the beginning, Iam Read More...
Posted Monday, September 08, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments

Working hard to make one's work less important

They say the difference between wisdom and intelligence is subtle -- it is intelligent to know asbout the risks of cigarettes and lung cancer, while it is wise to not smoke. So maybe one ay of defining them is calling intelligence "theoretical smarts" Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 07, 2008 12:46 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments
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A non-partisan type of wingnuttery

One to file under the "I thought I was blind all those years until I suddenly realized my hat was two sizes too large" category. :-) In the past I described in blogs like Some blog boggles and a few disclaimers my use of the term moronic wingnut and how Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 07, 2008 1:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments
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What version of Unicode should we support?

The other day, the question came in again. And when I say the question, I mean THE question. You know, the What Unicode version do you support? question. Well, technically it was a slight variation, more of a What version of Unicode should we support? Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 06, 2008 1:16 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Type my name, type my name\ You actin' kinda geeky, that IME is freaky\ Would your input change?

I admit I was tempted to really do up the Destiny's Child lyrics completely just like the title, but I decided if I ain't going to write the IME below that it would be kind of obnoxious to put that much time into a Yankovikian tribute like that.... Less Read More...
Posted Friday, September 05, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 3 Comments

The key KEY perspective is that 'Perspective is Key'

So the report that came in (about the Windows Keyboard Layouts discussed previously ) was an interesting one: For the Korean keyboard, I think the KOR and ENG buttons are reversed. Now this is one of those interesting philosophical issues, where one has Read More...
Posted Friday, September 05, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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It's not whether the glass is half empty or half full; it's what the hell is in the glass!

Over in the Microsoft VOLT Users Community, Pavanaja asked: I heard that dynamic fonts -EOTs created by WEFT -don't work in IE8. Is that true? Link - http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/397944-IE8-beta-and-WEFT/ -Pavanaja [I posted this in WEFT Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 7:31 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments
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Staying away from the compatibility zone is still a good idea

Martin asks: Hello Mr. Michael! I've a problem with Arabic (FARSI) unicode. I searched all the web many days - without success. I also posted to a newsgroup (microsoft.public.de.vc) and there they couldn't help me by answering my question, but the linked Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 12:21 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 0 Comments

Need to know the VK for A, ay?

So the question that Tom asked was: Hi Michael, your blog is really amazing. I have a question: I only have a character, like "A", and I need to find out the VK for the given keyboard layout. I have been struggeling with this topic for months without Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 03, 2008 3:16 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Sometimes a smile is all it takes?

This blog has no redeeming social value whatsoever, but it seems to have been written, and you seem to be reading it.... I was settled in, no big plans beyond avoiding the 90210 series premier and the moral decay that this particular phoenix rising would Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 03, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 2 Comments
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The hacks of yesterday become the workarounds of today when corroborated by the features of tomorrow

So the question that came in was along the following lines: We have Windows Server 2003 installed with Turkish regional settings. I have to change it to English US. But if we do it through the Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Advanced Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 02, 2008 7:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Internationalization in Silverlight?

The other day, Adrian Cadden sent me some email, curious about why I hadn't been blogging about Silverlight localization. I had to admit that the main reason was that I didn't know very much about it, and didn't really know of anyone who did! But then Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 02, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 1 Comments

Bidi, in your face[book]

Anyone who has been here for any length of time knows that I am not thrilled with Bidi support on various operating systems and in various browsers. But I noticed something today over in Facebook, at the various "groups" that I have joined (the funny Read More...
Posted Monday, September 01, 2008 1:31 PM by Michael S. Kaplan | 5 Comments

Some specs are always updated (eventually!)

A couple of days ago over on the VOLT Users Community, John Hudson pointed out some important updates that have happened for Indic fonts: Microsoft have posted the new versions of their Indic font specs, which include changes for Vista and Office 2007 Read More...
Posted Monday, September 01, 2008 12:01 AM by Michael S. Kaplan | 8 Comments
 
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