Hello again helpful readers;
Michael brings up some interesting points about fonts in the note below, and
I now have a related question.
I am helping set up a localization project for Win 95, 98, and NT software
which will be going into 20 languages (mostly European but also Simplified
Chinese, Greek, and Russian.) The .rc files currently specify the "generic"
system font MS Sans Serif. My understanding is that this is a Unicode font
which in theory can display all character sets, however, I'm feeling
skeptical as usual.
Can anyone comment on what problems we are likely to encounter if no font
changes are made? I'm assuming that many languages will be fine, but that a
few (such as the ones listed above) might have some problems. Ugliness as
Michael describes, if nothing else. Will the problems that occur in the NT
version be different than those in the other versions, given the level of
Unicode support it provides?
(Perhaps this sounds like a silly question; you are probably thinking "just
go ahead and change the darn font!" Unfortunately for this project, it is
not yet clear how well internationalized the components are, therefore, font
changes could be a major or a minor issue. I'm still trying to find out
where the fonts are defined, and until I know how easily changed they are, I
want to consider this as a risk.)
As usual, your tolerance of my ignorance is appreciated.
Suzanne Topping
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Kaplan <michka@trigeminal.com>
To: <AddisonP@simultrans.com>; <i18n-prog@acoin.com>;
<microsoft.public.vc.res_editing@list.deja.com>; <nelocsig@egroups.com>
Sent: Friday, November 12, 1999 8:16 AM
Subject: [nelocsig] Re: Quick Response Needed! (String table follow up)
>> if you have Asian languages, do the Japanese first (kana tends to expand
Japanese
>> more than the other Asian languages).
Exception to this being when the font size is anything other than 9 pt. For
whatever reasons, the
fonts used for Japanese/Korean/Simplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese are
consisdered (by customers)
to be incredibly ugly at specific sizes. They are all accepted at 9 pt, none
are considered
acceptable at 8 pt. Larger sizes vary depending on the language and the font
chosen. If there is a
case where a Japanese localizer will choose MS Song 10 pt (for example), a
Korean localizer may well
choose GulimChe 11 pt (these examples are totally contrived). So in cases
where the item being
localized may be of variable size, going with the "biggest" may well depend
on some of the
localization choices.
I have found that the market has a very strong bias against products that
tend to choose "ugly" in
favor of uniformity. Their bad feelings about this will often outweigh the
good feelings that have
about the localized product.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A shopper’s dream come true! Find practically anything on earth at eBay!
Come and browse the more than 2 million items up for bid at any time.
You never know what you might find at eBay!
http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/1140
-- Check out your group's private Chat room
-- http://www.egroups.com/ChatPage?listName=nelocsig&m=1
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:56 EDT