>Misha's right. We'll be happy to discuss these issues at the Mainz Unicode
>conference. For example, Lori Brownell and Avery Bishop will be talking
>about and demoing complex script handling that will ship as part of NT5.
>Here are a couple of notes for the moment:
>
>WinCE is Unicode based and you need to use the Unicode APIs (NT lets you use
>both A and W APIs, but WinCE only supports the W APIs). There is some
>Unicode support (e.g., TextOutW) in Win95 and eventually (sorry I can't be
>more precise) Microsoft OSs will all be Unicode based. Our TrueType font
>technology has always been based on Unicode, even back in the Win 3.1 days.
>Our Internet technology, ActiveX, is based on OLE, which has been Unicode
>based from the start. Internet Explorer 3.0 uses Unicode for some purposes
>and the next version is Unicode based in general. As you know, Java is
>Unicode based by definition, so our implementation is. Re "how many more
>years before PC users get a cheap MS knockoff of the Japanese Language Kit
>the Mac", four such FE language packs are included on the Office 97 CD-ROM as
>well as on the NT 4.0 CD-ROM and the language packs for Win95 are
>downloadable for free from http://www.microsoft.com/ie/.
>
>But note that even with the new OSs and apps being Unicode based, so long as
>you want to be able to read the many nonUnicode files out there and to
>communicate with nonUnicode software, you'll have to know about code pages.
>Sigh!
>
>Re what "Unicode based" currently means at Microsoft, it means use of Unicode
>characters internally, but doesn't yet include UTF-16 support or much in the
>way of combining mark support. OpenType currently supports all Unicode
>constructs except for UTF-16, which was defined after OpenType was defined.
>Guess we need to walk before we can run... Pls stay tuned; we're working
>hard on improving the support.
>
>Thanks
>Murray
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: unicode@Unicode.ORG [SMTP:unicode@Unicode.ORG]
>Sent: Thursday, January 16, 1997 5:29 AM
>To: unicode@Unicode.ORG
>Subject: Re: FWD: MS-Windows and Unicode Support
>
>There will be six Microsoft speakers at the Tenth International Unicode
>Conference <http://www.reuters.com/unicode/iuc10>. Come along and ask
>them!
>
>Misha
>
>|Microsoft Office 97, which MS claims is "unicode-based", whatever that
>|means, is being released tomorrow. It will likely become the world's
>|most successful commercial software application, so I'm curious: will
>|MS-Windows 97 also be "unicode-based"?
>|
>|I was delighted when MS based WinNT on unicode, then shocked when they
>|went backwards instead of forward with the release of Win95 a couple of
>|years later. I heard comments while I was at (the now-defunct) Microsoft
>|University to the effect that Bill Gates was all broken up about having
>|to throw unicode overboard, but that they just couldn't squeeze it into
>|the 4MB machine that was supposedly the minimum requirement for running
>|Win95.
>|
>|Since the release of Win95, memory prices have crashed, and I would
>|suspect that having the same system requirements for Win97 as the
>|original WinNT had years ago would not be unreasonable. This means that
>|the "code-page bug" could be "fixed" once and for all.
>|
>|With Office97, FrontPage97, Visual Basic 5.0, and who knows what else
>|supposedly "unicode-based", does anyone have any information on the
>|unicode plans for the operating systems that underlie these apps?
>|
>|What are the unicode support plans for Win9X, WinCE, and WinNT
>|(presumably there are still improvements to be made)?
>|
>|What about their internet-based technologies: Internet Explorer and MS's
>|implementation of Java?
>|
>|And, at the risk of sounding like a whiner, how many more years before
>|PC users get a cheap MS knockoff of the Japanese Language Kit the Mac
>|had years ago? If it were just for me, I'd just use a Mac, but I have to
>|deliver CJK script to the PC screens of my US and European customers.
>|
>|
>|
>|Thanks,
>|__Glen Perkins__
>|gperkins@netcom.com
>
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