From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Mon Mar 20 2006 - 05:20:52 CST
Richard Wordingham wrote:
> "Philippe Verdy" wrote:
>> Why then giving options to users to set fonts for Lao, Tibetan,
>> Khmer and Sinhala? These options have there in Internet Explorer
>> even before Windows XP was released.
In fact, there are there since the introduction in 1998 of the new
architecture (with Uniscribe etc.) in IE 5.0, targetting... Windows 98.
Which is well-known to *NOT* allow you to display easily those scripts
without corresponding "ANSI codepages".
It is possible to install some Nagari etc. fonts in Win9x, and as a result
being able to display Hindi content with it (and the said interface works).
Nevertheless, this is widely marked by Microsoft as "not supported" or even
"not working".
And do not hold your breath expecting MS to correct it!
>> When XP was released, thesupport
>> was still not there, but thesescripts were still announced in user
>> interface settings. So users thought that these scripts would be
>> finally available in XP.
Hmmm. Joe User sees that it is not working in 9x. New OS (2000) is coming.
Still not working. New OS (Me) is coming. Still not working. New OS (XP2001)
is coming.
And Joe User would think it would "finally" be available?
Why would he think so, particularly if it is still not working?
> If you get the right version of Uniscribe, Khmer is then reasonably
> well supported.
More importantly, you need fitting fonts.
That is the #1 problem since the beginning (97): without proper fonts, users
cannot even detect the inconsistencies in Uniscribe, which could in turn
hamper proper support in IE and any "client".
And developping fonts (of the quality needed for inclusion in the Windows
product) needs time and work; ask John H. for details!
Lesser quality fonts could be available (by various means) from other
sources, and the quality of the result is lower; of course, such a solution
would be unsupported by MS; however, provided minimum support in Uniscribe,
it "works".
There are scripts which are more or less later in the pipeline; in fact,
some are even not activated in Uniscribe. Evidently, Saurashtra is not! I
think Myanmar/Burmese were still unactivated in this position last year or 2
years ago (around build 470); Khmer was so before build 300 or so of
Uniscribe; OTOH the 9 "main" scripts for India, including Oriya, i.e. the
ones included in TUS1.0, always have been, as far as I can see.
Antoine
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