Michael Kaplan - Bringing Windows Vista to International markets
- Posted: Dec 14, 2005 at 6:35 PM
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Bringing Windows Vista to non-English markets is a lot harder than just changing a text file. Here Michael Kaplan, technical lead on the US-Windows Globalization team, on the discusses some of the things (and tools) that the team does to bring Windows Vista to non-English speaking markets. Real interesting and some tips for developers who are localizing their own applications.
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I can't be sure as I'm writing this on a Italian keyboard but I wasn't able to find accented и or e. I wrote è using the italian e grave.
One nice feature when using a US keyboard is that if I press the tick or backtick I can have è or é in italian, could we have the same thing on a macedonian keyboard?
And don't forget that there are probably some others in the group who wouldn't mind an interview (like the other typography team!).
I could probably find something else to blather about (it's like the blog only less typing!).
The easiest way to look at a keyboard layout is to open up MSKLC and look at it by using File|Load Existing Layout... functionality.
The name of the manifest is still Macedonian (FYROM), sorry.
Though the keyboard layout name is "FYRO Macedonian". I may blog about that one some day....
I am not sure what you mean by the è and the é though.... they are not available on the US keyboard as keys or dead keys, though they are available on both Italian keyboard layouts we ship....
Oh, and neither of those two characters you mentioned are on the FYRO Macedonian keyboard layout.
Tell me more about the name issue
As for the name, that is a different story and has nothing to do with the U.N. or the US or the 100 countries. Like I said, maybe I will cover it in the blog some day.
Hi ploe!
Having to learn to speak fluent question mark and fluent null glyph is one of those exciting occupational hazards that I must admit is nice to see so much less often in Vista.
It is nice to hear from people who find me entertaining, it is fun to hear from people who find me to be educational, but it is awesome to hear from people who find me useful!
Be sure to put questions you run across in the Suggestion Box....
That made me laugh.
If it's using more than 2 bytes, how does that work with current programs if they're using 2-bytes representation?
Nope, see the FAQ: I understand that all Unicode characters are 16 bits, and that the high byte is used to switch between code blocks. Is that correct?
I'm wondering how any Unicode character can be expressed in 16 bits, myself.
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000873050764/
Samuel, UK
I need to watch the video once i get home
See http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/441227.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/441819.aspx for prior postings I have done about this particular keyboard. There is a lot more needed than funding....
Hmmmm.... all of the Unicode code points from U+0000 to U+FFFF fit into sixteen bits, and many of them are indeed characters (though not all of them are).....
So what's the conclusion are you pro or anti, I couldn't tell. You must have suggested it to the hardware dpt, what did they think, I did post when there was a video for them but I don't think there was a reply.
Samuel, UK
Sorry, but what is possible/feasible often can be more boring than what looks cool.
It is definitely nothing new -- I have seen efforts from Microsoft Research and other places that have attempted similar prototypes. It has never yet proven cost effective -- the one exception being the TabletPC soft keyboard, which changes faces to match the layout....
It is not a matter if being pro or anti, it is a matter of technical feasibility (and the fact that the company in question does not have a track record of finished products so much as they do of ideas that never come to fruition....
Probably not.
But I can understand why some people might....
Do you do any work on the IME side of things? I do a lot of Japanese work on mine, and any updated would be a great.
Also, what about the mysterious ScrLk, SysRq, Break and Pause keys? what do they do under Vista, now that we no longer live in the world of ANSI TTYs?.
Finally, i have often wondered what the difference in localisations wwre between en-US and en-UK, aside from dates and times?
I do not work on IMEs myself. But I can say a lot of work has happened there to move them out of the legacy IMM model and into the more flexible and easier to create TSF model. I'll probably blog on this more in the future, especially after Beta 2 is out.
They don't do anything mysteriously new or anything like that....
I think you mean en-GB (en-UK would mean English (Ukraine), after all!).
There is not nearly as much difference as there ought to be, in my opinion. If you ask me there should be a separate localization if for no other reason than to make sure the localisation of English is appropriate to the market. The locale support is there, but the actual UI of Windows could definitely do better....
Clearly I'm missing something. From the above FAQ:
So how do over 137,000 code points fit in UTF-16's 16 bits? Do we just not use anything over FFFF?
Ah, you aren't missing anything.
If you are using UTF-16 (which for the most part Microsoft does) then for beyond U+FFFF, you use the surrogate pair mechanism.
I have a big blog entry on this here that tries to explain a whole bunch about it....
Very interesting. I have a doubt about globalization: How does Microsoft choose the languages a beta product as Windows Vista will be shipped? I heard Vista Beta 2 will be in German and Japanese. How have these languages been chosen?
The original one is a GotDotNet sample that was posted some time ago in both VB.Net and C# forms. It is still there, in fact.
The one that better supports 2.0 (based on the one I demo'ed in the video) will be available shortly; Francois is working on it and promises it will be done soon. I will post about it in my blog when it happens.
Great, thanks for the link!
You can actually compare the LOCALE_SENGLANGUAGE to the LOCALE_SNATIVELANGNAME to see what I mean....
Long time no talk!
You know perfectly well who is on the shirt since you and I both saw her at a show several years back -- she was opening for the Kinks in Boston, I believe? And you said you had a nice time, to boot!
For everyone else, it was Aimee Mann on the shirt. My shirts are at this point divided evenly between singer/songwriters and US intelligence agencies; the shirt I was wearing that day fell into the former category, obviously!
Chording system... I want this! But I thought the keyboard interface was limited to a certain number of simultaneously pressed keys?
However I do some times encouter bugs in your localisation ..
Having to deal with the Arabic localised versions of Windows and MS Products .. I tried to post various bugs and issues via various MS feedback forms , but never had a professional reply , and if there was a reply it seemed that our issue was mis-understood ...
Here are some issues regarding the Arabic Localization of Windows and specificlly as applied to choosing an "Arabic- Libya" regional settings :
1) Microsoft wrongly assumes that we in Libya use "AZERTY" keyboards WHICH is WRONG.. but in fact we only use "QWERTY" keyboards.
2) Microsoft wrongly assumes that we in Libya use French as a secondary language WHICH is WRONG.. but infact we commonly use "English" as a secondary language...
3) Microsoft wrongly assumes that we in Libya use the "Hindi" numerials WHICH is WRONG.. and in fact we use "Arabic Numerals" as used in europe an all over the world..
I hope that such issues would be looked at and put right in next releases of Windows..
I'm sorry that I posted such a comment here , but I found this place to be the right place to bring attention to such issues as we tried other means and none worked..
You can take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/508595.aspx where I have tried to give an answer to the question thats that you have posted. We'll see what can happen here....
But don't tell everyone bout Fijian, or I won't ever be able get that research trip comp' d!
I am asking because, we could then test our localized applications, without having tons of different windows installations on our testmachines.
The exact SKU packaging has not yet been announced, so it is unclear exactly what it will look like. Though it is unlikely that every single UI language will ship in the one releaze, for several reasons, such as:
* not all of them are done and ready at the same time.
* customers who do not want all languages will want a "cheaper" version without all languages bundled (this happens now with Proofing Tools)
But the truth is that the architecture now supports the idea of packages that can be installed to add languages easily, and there are several targeted SKUs that many OEMs will want for multgilingual locations like Canada and Switzerland, and several other scenarios are being considered as the SKU decisions are being made....
For developers, the traditional mechanism for such things has been MSDN, so they are a good place to keep an eye on for future plans in this area.
I still use the TSI synchronizer and thanks for keeping it active.
Sorry for the delay there. But see this post on my blog for info on the XP LIP for Urdu, which is a first step!
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