From: Jungshik Shin (jshin@mailaps.org)
Date: Sat Jul 12 2003 - 00:37:04 EDT
On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> On Friday, July 11, 2003 12:14 PM, Jungshik Shin <jshin@mailaps.org> wrote:
> > For instance, on Win 9x/ME, MS IE that (appears to) use Uniscribe
> > APIs directly can render complex scripts but Mozilla that uses
> > standard Win32 Text APIs (such as TextOut) does not as well (except
> > for Thai, Arabic, Hebrew, Tamil and Korean for which it has built-in
> > glyph-based solution).
>
> The Win32 Text APIs (such as TextOut) actually DO support UniScribe
> transparently on Windows XP... In most applications, this means
> that the UniScribe support works without requiring explicit calls
> to the Uniscribe API.
You can add Win2k whereever you have Win XP. Anyway, didn't I write
(or at least imply) that Mozilla (for that matter any applications)
relying on basic Win32 Text APIs _can_ *render* complex scripts
on Win2k/XP? What different conclusion did you reach from mine?
Most people here are well aware that Win 9x/ME and Win 2k/XP are
two *different* breeds of OS'.
> So there's a difference in terms of usable APIs: on Win9x/ME, the
> basic Win32 Text APIs don't have UniScribe support built-in, but
As Andrew noted in his response to your message, MSDN articles
on related issues are a bit confusing as to what exactly is going
on inside *TextOut*. You might be right, but also could be wrong
about '.... built-in .... ' and '....transparently....'.
> the UniScribe API is available separately as an additional system
> component (installed with Internet Explorer which uses it if
> available). On Windows XP, an application can use either the Basic
> Win32 Text API, or the UniScribe API for finer controls of glyph
> substitutions according to user preferences and customizable or
> dynamic locales.
Well, actually there are two more ways to deal with CTL rendering
on Win32. And a lot more important difference between two approach
you mentioned lies in the text selection and caret/cursor movement.
With basic Text APIs, you cannot move cursor graphme by graphme
or make copy and cut always fall on the grapheme boundaries.
Well, sure you can, but you have to do all the jobs yourself.
One can just look up MSDN articles if interested.
> I don't know why UniScribe is not always installed by default,
> as it is also useful for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic (the regional
Add Korean to the list. After making a Korean opentype font,
I was confused because it worked fine inside font editing tools,
but it didn't work with MS IE and Mozilla under Win2k (although I
had heard that Korean OTFs shipped with Korean version of MS Office
XP worked well with MS IE.). On that particular Win2k box, I hadn't
enabled (needless to say, Korean support had been installed) support
for any of South and Southeast Asian scripts. After installing
Devanagari, Tamil and Thai support (just one should be sufficient),
the font worked well with both MS IE and Mozilla.
> settings checkbox label is quite confusive as users may think they
> they don't need it for their language, and it should have been
> better named "Support for text rendering using Unicode combining
> sequences", or just "Support for UniScribe and OpenType fonts" with
This is a very good suggestion.
Jungshik
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