Re: Language Tagging And Unicode

From: Peter Constable (peter_constable@sil.org)
Date: Thu Jan 20 2000 - 09:11:05 EST


       I stand happily corrected.

       Peter

       From: <chrispr@MICROSOFT.com> AT Internet on 01/20/2000 10:00
             AM

       Received on: 01/20/2000

       
       


       
       Peter mentions that Word uses language information only for
       selecting proofing tools, but that is not all. Word uses
       language for many things:
       Determining date format
       Determining sort order
       Controlling line breaking, word breaking (for scripts that need
        it)
       Determining many default properties
       Etc.

       Once the necessary infrastructure (fonts, UniScribe support) is
       available in at least a prototype testable form, and if I am
       still running things :), you'll probably see Word start
       displaying language-appropriate glyphs from fonts if they
       exist. From the application perspective all we need is to be
       able to add a language parameter to our text rendering, and the
       OS should take care of it (UniScribe is part of Windows). These
       things take time. I suspect that given the standard priorities,
       the languages that we see this first will be CJK. Once the
       infrastructure is there, third parties could create fonts with
       the necessary glyph tables for languages we didn't do
       initially.

       Chris Pratley
       Group Program Manager
       Microsoft Word

>(Text in word Word at least has a language attribute so
              presumably that application "knows" the language
              system.)

              Currently, Word only uses this for selecting proofing
              tools.

>I've been trying to build OT fonts based on the
              assumption that applications will use the LangSys table.
              Am I wasting my time?

              No, I pray not! I doubt you're alone on this.

              Peter



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