Small note: All language flavours of Win2000 include the Indic support and
input methods Chris describes, not just the one shipped in India.
Chris Pratley
Group Program Manager
Microsoft Word
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher John Fynn [mailto:cfynn@dircon.co.uk]
Sent: June 18, 2000 4:12 AM
To: Unicode List
Cc: Prof. K.C.Mahapatra
Subject: Unicode and Indic scripts on Windows (was: Re: FAQ : principle of
use and availability of UTF-16.)
Prof. K.C.Mahapatra wrote:
<< Most of the software developers today are using MS Windows 98 with a
keyboard
to write in English fonts ASCII characters. ...>>
For a start Window's 98 does not fully support UNICODE. If you want to use
UNICODE on Windows computers (without going through too many hoops) use
Windows
NT 4 or better yet Windows 2000 (NT 5).
Windows 2000 shipped in India comes with input methods which will allow you
to
input Unicode characers for Devanagri and Tamil - and I suspect Oriya, &
etc.
will be available before too long. You can also download the NT DDK, which
will
allow you to create your own Oriya keyboard from
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/ddk/ddk40.htm . Another way is to use
Tavultesoft's Keyboard Manager for Unicode
http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/unicode.shtml.
To properly display Unicode text for Indic scripts, Windows applications -
such
as Office 2000, Internet Explorer and Microsoft's rich text controls - rely
on
OpenType and Uniscribe. If you have questions about OpenType and Uniscribe
the
best place to ask is on the OpenType list see:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/otlist.htm. It would probably
also be
worth your while to read the OpenType specification
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/tt/tt.htm and "Microsoft's document
Creating and supporting OpenType fonts for Indic scripts"
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/OTSPEC/indicot/default.htm
I hope this helps,
Best Regards
- Christopher J Fynn
mailto:cfynn@dircon.co.uk
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:21:04 EDT