Subject: Re: BiDi on Windows - was it tested?
From: Leonard Rosenthol (leonardr@lazerware.com)
Date: Thu Apr 05 2001 - 09:20:53 CDT
At 8:11 PM +0100 4/4/01, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
>There is one particular aspect of the keyborad magic that will need
>to be considered. We can fully support bidi on Windows with no
>built-in bidi support, e.g., regular English Windows.
True, but I think we both agree that someone who is
interested in BiDi will either be running a localized version of
Windows OR (like me) they are running NT or 2K with the appropriate
"language packs" installed. Either way, the input methods and such
will be present.
>Unfortunately,
>the international keyboard utility that comes with English windows
>(at least win 9x) does not have Hebrew or Arabic layouts, so that I
>cannot type in these languages.
Correct, and we will not (IMO) be supporting those platforms.
You will need a localized 9x/ME, OR NT/2K with language packs.
>The same will be probably true for
>the CJK languages, i.e., we will be able to display them under
>English Windows, but not create documents containing them.
If you want to display them, you still need the fonts, which
means you have/need the language packs - in which case you also have
the input methods and you can create them.
>I am not sure what the best way around this would be.
I don't see a problem here - you are running an unsupported
platform for non-Roman publishing on Windows.
>I believe that
>a keyborad driver for each language is stored in a separate DLL,
>and it should be possible to create and distribute suplementary
>modules with Abi for any such languages, providing these DLLs are
>somewhere documented (I have looked for some documentation on
>these a few years back, without success).
Why would you want to reinvent the wheel? The OS has all the
services (unlike Unix), let's USE THEM!! We don't reinvent GUI
widgets, we don't reinvent graphic primitives - why reinvent user
input handling?!?!
Leonard
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
You've got a SmartFriend in Pennsylvania
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leonard Rosenthol Internet: leonardr@lazerware.com
Web Site: <http://www.lazerware.com/>
Coola Signature: <http://signature.coola.com/?leonardr@lazerware.com>
PGP Fingerprint: C76E 0497 C459 182D 0C6B AB6B CA10 B4DF 8067 5E65
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Thu Apr 05 2001 - 09:19:39 CDT