Michael Jansson wrote,
> ... People may as easily fail to
> update a Win9x system with Uniscribe and a 23KB font as they would with a
> 23MB font.
True.
> The amount of support needed to sort out these users would still
> be the same.
>
Also true. One FAQ page with brief instructions ought to do it.
> I'm not arguing that you can not update one Win9x machine to show Tamil
> correctly. I'm arguing that you should not advice companies to tell a
> million web users to do that on a broad basis. You need test coverage,
> support, etc before doing that.
>
Uniscribe is a windows application and Microsoft tests it. Both
Microsoft and Apple provide tools to font developers which validate
fonts. TTF/OTF fonts have a rigid structure, if a font passes either
Microsoft's or Apple's font validators yet a system crashes, it's the
system that's got the problem.
>
> Let's summarize what I have said:
OK.
> 1 - My original posting on this thread clearly states that you need to be
> careful when trying to use Uniscribe on Win9x, because it is not officially
> supported there.
I think versions of USP10.DLL ("Uniscribe") exist on just about every
Win9x platform. Since only Unicode-aware software uses Uniscribe,
I can't see how installing a newer version would not be officially
supported.
> There would be an official "Update your Win9x with
> Uniscribe" service pack if it would be possible. Maybe there will be
> someday, though I doubt it.
There should be, but I doubt if there will be, too. Not because it's a
bad idea, but because Microsoft doesn't really need to support Win 9x
anymore, it's a dead-end platform.
Please refer to Andrew Cunningham's letter to this list from last
January for more info about Uniscribe and how to update it:
( ...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Cunningham" <andjc@ozemail.com.au>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 3:10 AM
Subject: Re: Problems with viewing Hindi Unicode Page
...)
> 2 - I have exemplified why including download and installation instructions
> for upgrading a Win9x machine with Uniscribe is a bad idea. Am I wrong?
I think you are wrong about this. I don't think you've proven that
updating Uniscribe is a bad thing, you've only proven that certain
fonts are a bad thing on some platforms.
> Am I
> badmouthing anyone?
>
Perhaps. Is it badmouthing someone to call them unethical for offering
users instructions on how they can compute in their own language on
their older systems?
Best regards,
James Kass.
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