Peter Constable wrote,
>
> I'm surprised that plane 2 characters can show up at all on WinMe.
I was dumfounded.
> This
> isn't an IE or Uniscribe issue, it'd a GDI issue: something has to do the
> cmap lookup, and that something has to be able to handle the newer cmap
> formats that support surrogates. I was under the impression that this
> first appeared on Win2K. Which leads me to be sceptical and wonder how you
> know that those are plane 2 characters if they only appear as momentarily
> flickers?
>
Easy, I made the font that's being momentarily displayed. Also,
depending upon when the mouse is released, the Plane Two glyph
may remain on the screen highlighted for selection.
On this page, (all-on-one-line)
http://www.i18nwithvb.com/surrogate_ime/code_charts/05.asp?nofont
...you can try to duplicate the effect on M.E. in MSIE 5.5
First, [View] - [Text Size] - [Largest], to make the text big enough
to work with.
Then, position the mouse at the extreme left of the first pair of
null boxes which display where a glyph for U+20000 is expected.
Click and hold the mouse, slowly drag it towards the right. At
about the mid-point between the two null boxes, the flickering
effect described earlier occurs. On my system, I see the glyph
for U+20000 coming from my Plane 2 font (Code2002). Say what
you will about my CJK glyphs: they're distinctive.
This works on any character on the chart for which there is a
font with the correct glyph properly mapped. But, it only works
on one character (or null box pair, if you will) at a time.
If the mouse is released at just the right moment, the Plane Two
character remains on the screen highlighted. Can't take a picture
because as soon as anything else is clicked, the highlighting disappears,
and the original null box glyph pair is restored to the display.
Hope this is clear.
Windows Millennium Edition, MSIE 5.5.
The only possible "joker in the deck" I can think of is that the
Uniscribe used here is the special one available to VOLT members.
I also added stuff to the registry per the Microsoft instructions
for enabling "surrogates" on W2K.
>
> That's true, but the parsing of that cmap format must still be done, and
> as far as I know it's handled by GDI. I could be wrong, though.
>
You could be right, too.
>
> >Since MSIE and Uniscribe are already correctly parsing that
> >new character map format (else, how could the correct
> >Plane Two character appear at all?),
>
> Since I have been under the impression that IE and Uniscribe do *not* deal
> with parsing cmaps, I am doubting that anybody has actually seen plane 2
> characters on WinMe.
>
Well, something is getting the right glyph at the right time from
the right place. Regardless of the source, the point is that non-BMP
support in MSIE on Win M.E. could obviously be made to work, if the
software designers were so inclined.
<humor>
In fact, on the "e-truscan" mailing list (this term "coined" by
Tex Texin) over the weekend, there was even mention of a possible
boycott. This blew over quickly when it was revealed that all of
the e-truscan members had already upgraded to W2K, which
kind of mooted the boycott idea.
</humor>
Best regards,
James Kass.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Nov 19 2001 - 23:56:36 EST