Well,
I do not speak for MS and would not want *that* job anyway (especially for
issues like this one) but one thing I *know* is the first tester's axiom:
"If you do not test it, its broken."
I am just about positive that they did not test such a scenario. Remember
that Uniscribe still sits atop GDI and no matter how impressive it tries to
be, it cannot go beyond what GDI can do. I did see some very interesting
surropgate-type problems with the Win9x GDI, so I am not surprised they
would choose to not go down that road?
As for IE vs. Win2000/WinXP, those are unfortunate bugs, and they should
definitetely be fixed (hopefully they will fix the Extension A bugs in IE,
too!).
MichKa
Michael Kaplan
Trigeminal Software, Inc.
http://www.trigeminal.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Kass" <jameskass@worldnet.att.net>
To: "Michael (michka) Kaplan" <michka@trigeminal.com>; "Tex Texin"
<texin@progress.com>; "Unicoders" <unicode@unicode.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2001 8:23 PM
Subject: Re: Unicode surrogates in browsers for the compelling demo
> If a Plane Two character can flicker on-and-off in MSIE 5.5
> on Win M.E., then this OS and browser should be able to
> display non-BMP text without any problem.
>
> There is no reason for it not to work. Microsoft may not
> expect it to work and the flickering display may have been
> unintentional or an oversight. But the flickering display
> clearly shows that it could (and should) work.
>
> I don't expect it to work in Notepad on M.E., but I do expect
> it to work in MSIE. M.E. isn't Unicode based, but MSIE and
> Uniscribe handle complex script OpenType substitutions
> well. The level of sophistication required for such complex
> script handling is much, much greater than that of parsing
> a slightly modified character map format in a font.
>
> Since MSIE and Uniscribe are already correctly parsing that
> new character map format (else, how could the correct
> Plane Two character appear at all?), the browser and/or
> Uniscribe should be adjusted to permit non-BMP display
> on Win M.E.
>
> Surely, the browser's lack of ability in being able to handle
> UTF-8 for Plane One, while handling UTF-8 for Plane Two
> just fine (on W2K), is a bug that should be fixed. It also
> illustrates that non-BMP support is still rather new, still
> under testing, and still being developed. Hopefully, future
> updates of MSIE/Uniscribe will resolve these issues.
>
> Best regards,
>
> James Kass.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael (michka) Kaplan" <michka@trigeminal.com>
> To: "James Kass" <jameskass@worldnet.att.net>; "Tex Texin"
<texin@progress.com>; "Unicoders" <unicode@unicode.org>
> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2001 2:46 PM
> Subject: Re: Unicode surrogates in browsers for the compelling demo
>
>
> > Microsoft does not say this will work and do not expect it to work. You
have
> > to have an OS that suppprts this sort of thing. :-)
> >
> > MichKa
> >
> > Michael Kaplan
> > Trigeminal Software, Inc.
> > http://www.trigeminal.com/u
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "James Kass" <jameskass@worldnet.att.net>
> > To: "Michael (michka) Kaplan" <michka@trigeminal.com>; "Tex Texin"
> > <texin@progress.com>; "Unicoders" <unicode@unicode.org>
> > Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2001 7:48 PM
> > Subject: Re: Unicode surrogates in browsers for the compelling demo
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Michael Kaplan wrote,
> > >
> > > > When I did have this working, I had the config as shown at the
following
> > > > site; further respondent sayeth naught:
> > > >
> > > > http://www.i18nwithvb.com/surrogate_ime/code_charts/
> > > >
> > > > I was at that time running Win2000 SP2, IE 5.5, and a version of
WEFT.
> > > >
> > >
> > > For what it's worth, this page (all on one line):
> > > http://www.i18nwithvb.com/surrogate_ime/code_charts/05.asp?nofont
> > >
> > > ...has kind of a bizarre result in the MSIE 5.5 on Windows
> > > Millennium Edition.
> > >
> > > It doesn't display the Plane Two glyph *unless* it is being
> > > "selected" (as in for copy/paste operation). While it is being
> > > selected, the display for that single character flickers between
> > > the actual character and the dual null box characters.
> > >
> > > Depending upon when the mouse is released, the resulting
> > > display will either be the Plane Two character or two null boxes
> > > highlighted for selection. Can't make a screen shot of this
> > > because as soon as the screen capturing software is fired up,
> > > the highlighting disappears, and the display is back to two null
> > > boxes. This seems to work for only one character at a time.
> > >
> > > But, the amazing thing is that a non-BMP character displays in
> > > the browser on Win M.E. at all, even if briefly.
> > >
> > > (I fixed up the Win M.E. registry with the Scripts 42 setting and
> > > entered appropriate font names as string values just like the
> > > instructions for W2K.)
> > >
> > > This only happens with Plane Two, not Plane One. When tested with
> > > registry set to Code2001 on Etruscan, it looked like the browser was
> > > trying to use a fixed width font, just like it looked under W2K.
Could
> > > it be that the browser only tries to use a fixed width font for
non-BMP
> > > material? (The Plane Two font *is* fixed width, Code2001 isn't.)
> > >
> > > In MSIE 5.5 on Win M.E., the null boxes aren't from Code2001, even
> > > with the registry set to Code2001 for scripts 42, and the Latin font
> > > set to Code2001 in the browser, and even a font-face tag used in the
> > > HTML simultaneously.
> > >
> > > Based on a letter from Lars Marius Garshol in which the Opera 6.0
> > > beta is mentioned as supporting non-BMP ranges, downloaded the
> > > free version for Windows M.E., but haven't been able to display
> > > any Plane One or Plane Two characters yet. Do note, however, that
> > > the Opera browser offers sophisticated display and font controls,
> > > and possibly I just haven't figured out the right combination. Or,
> > > it could be that only Opera for W2K-and-up supports non-BMP
> > > ranges.
> > >
> > > The charts made for Plane Two (links above) are encoded as UTF-8
> > > shortest form, right? In other words, we shouldn't be trying NCRs
> > > for surrogate pairs or anything equally special?
> > >
> > > Best regards,
> > >
> > > James Kass.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Sun Nov 18 2001 - 23:54:17 EST