From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Thu Mar 25 2004 - 11:43:48 EST
Hi Peter,
On Thursday, March 25, 2004 2:19 PM
Peter Kirk <peterkirk@qaya.org> va escriure:
> On 25/03/2004 03:33, Antoine Leca wrote:
>
>> As Peter correctly noted from day 1, all this stuff is not very
>> important, since Urdu users really expect nastaleeq style, so either
>> they are not using Urdu support, or they use proprietary solutions
>> which extent remains to be explained by competent persons.
>>
> There are Unicode Nastaliq fonts available,
Good to know. As I said, the point is to know to what extent they are used.
>>> (and of course Windows 9x/ME which does not support easily
>>> multiple layouts,
>> What it does not support easily are other scripts like Gurmukhi or
>> Bengali, particularly on input ;-).
<snipped>
> I disagree. There is no reason why these scripts cannot be displayed
Sorry Peter. I was refering myself to inputing. I know very well that
displaying is no problem for a long time (since IE5, in fact).
On another forum (dealing with fonts) I see every other week a request from
some Indian asking Microsoft to enable Windows 9x to input in some way Indic
scripts. This is happening for many years. Clearly, Microsoft will not
release that. Since in fact this is not very complex given what is currently
available, I believe this is a deliberate move from the part of Microsoft.
So as a result, and trying to get back at the original question, we have:
- for any serious use with the language, this will require inputing data,
and thus Windows 2000 at the very least (and more likely XP according to
Peter Constable), XP sp2 for Bengali
- if we are referring only to casual browsing, then downloading specific
fonts is not an option in my eyes, so again we are stuck, this time by the
fonts, to 2000/XP/XPsp2 according to the language (except perhaps Punjabi
written in Arabic script, which might be easier). Here obviously font hacks
and similar (iPLugin, EOT, etc.) is an alternative to Unicode worth
considering
- for the serious reader but without any input (would be the case for an
extranet where any input would be only numbers), then yes this might be
accomodated using less powerful platforms, and typically Windows 9x, with
these additional points:
a) required downloading of some additional fonts in addition to default
b) for Urdu and Penjabi, perhaps upgrading of IE to some version (to
obtain the correct version of USP10.DLL); at least IE5 (released 1999)
c) for Bengali only, also required downloading [and installation...] of
an updated version of USP10.DLL, still to be published furthermore, the
legality of which action I have no clue about. Or alternatively a future
version of IE might furnish this, but I am not sure at all that these
versions will be able to install on Win98 or Me (I am sure they won't
install on 95). Here I will not hold my breath.
Once the update is done, Opera should work, and I expect Gecko should as
well. Not tested, though.
Antoine
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