Re: Version(s) of Unicode supported by various versions of MicrosoftWindows

From: Ernest Cline (ernestcline@mindspring.com)
Date: Fri Mar 05 2004 - 15:09:53 EST

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    > [Original Message]
    > From: Patrick Andries <Patrick.Andries@xcential.com>
    >
    > Peter said:
    >
    > >>People *really shouldn't* ask "Does product X support Unicode version
    > >>N?" They should be asking questions like "Can product X correctly
    > >>perform function Y on such-and-such characters added in Unicode version
    > >>N?"
    > >>
    > >>
    >
    > This makes for a rather long list of questions if you want to know what
    > Microsoft supports in a new OS or product release for instance.
    >
    > One might think of how to best present the latest support level in a
    > concise fashion and not on a per function per character basis.

    Perhaps something like the hasFeature method of the
    DOMImplementation object in the Document Object Model
    (DOM) would be of use. Of course, as with DOM, people would run
    into implementations that claim to support something without actually
    supporting it or having a buggy implementation. But being able to
    ask simple things in ECMAScript like:
      document.implementation.hasFeature("UnicodeCore", "4.0")
    or:
      document.implementation.hasFeature("UnicodeBidi","3.1")
    would be of use to some people. (C programming would
    presumably use a different binding for the method to use
    outside the DOM as well.) The difficult part of course, would
    be defining which features would be askable and defining
    what exactly they entail. It would be nice, but not essential if
    it could be integrated with the corresponding DOM method.
    IIRC ISO 10646 provides a mechanism for indicating script
    support, but what that is, I have no idea.



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