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 : Mon Nov 19 2001 - 00:45:27 EST