Re: New MS Mac Office and Unicode?

From: Deborah Goldsmith (goldsmit@apple.com)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2004 - 14:02:36 EST

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    On Jan 6, 2004, at 11:48 AM, Tom Gewecke wrote:
    > MS Mac Office 2004 was announced at MacWorld SF today. Does anyone
    > know
    > whether this update finally brings the Unicode capabilities of the
    > WinXP
    > version to the Mac OS X world?

    I can now tell you that Mac Office 2004 does offer enhanced support for
    Unicode, in that it can input, edit, and display Unicode characters
    that are not part of any Mac OS legacy character set. I can't say yet
    to what extent the various components of Office support complex shaping
    behavior or bidirectional scripts (e.g., Arabic, Thai, Hindi), because
    I don't know. However, at the very least you will see access to
    expanded CJK repertoires, and access to languages like Icelandic and
    Greek.

    Mac Office 2004 will also include fonts with larger repertoires than
    previous versions of Mac Office.

    Here are some highlights from the PR information I received:

    - Can input, print, and display more than 30 languages
    - Larger font repertoires (e.g., Arial 296 glyphs -> 1192, MS Mincho
    ~9000 glyphs -> 16,031)
    - Japanese fonts included (MS P Mincho and Gothic)

    I've been told more details will be discussed in the coming months
    before MS Mac Office 2004 is released. Perhaps some of the Microsoft
    folks on this list can add more details? :-)

    Deborah Goldsmith
    Manager, Fonts / Unicode liaison
    Apple Computer, Inc.
    goldsmit@apple.com



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