On 12/01/2000 06:24:37 AM sreekant wrote: >hi all, >I had earlier posted a question on viewing the characters of different >languages on my browser(IE 5.0) and i have come to a conclusion that it >is possible through installing fonts on your browser but what if we have >to provide support for indian languages. I'll respond making two assumptions: OS is Windows, and character encoding is Unicode, not ISCII or some custom "hacked font" encoding. Depending on what level of support you mean, things are potentially possible, but this varies by platform. You could work with at least some Indic scripts today, and view them on IE5, if you (or the user browsing the Web) are using Windows 2000, and have appropriate OpenType fonts. This without eot or WEFT. The Unicode characters are transformed in the rendering process by MS's Uniscribe engine and by substitution and positioning tables in the OT fonts into the appropriate sequence of positioned glyphs. All this happens on the user's machine, using fonts on their machine (assuming, of course, that they're running Win2K and have the fonts). On Win9x/Me, it would be potentially possible to display Indic text, but not to edit it. This is because of limitations in Unicode support in Win9x/Me: there is general support for display of Unicode characters, but character input is dependent upon codepage support, and there are no MS codepages for any S. Asian scripts. (The codepage limitation does not apply on Win2000 except for apps that are not written to support the Unicode capabilities of WinNT/2K.) Now, I say "potentially" because MS has not chosen (thus far, at any rate), to provide any Indic fonts or a version of Uniscribe with Indic support as an update option for users on Win9x/Me. The thinking apparently has been, "Why offer an Indic update pack? The support is already there on Win2000, and editing wouldn't be possible on Win9x/Me." (This was discussed recently on this list.) I'm inclined to say that they should provide an Indic display update for Win9x/Me users, though, and this is certainly a technical possibility. In Office 97, support was included for displaying Far East text, including the necessary fonts, even though there was no way to input or edit Far East text. That was seen to be useful for Office users then, and it seems to me to have been a good idea. In the same way, I'm inclined to say that it makes sense for IE users on Win9x/Me to be able to display Indic text, even though they can't input or edit. With Office 10 (I'm guessing), Win9x/Me users could also view Indic text in any Office app (but not input or edit). That would seem to me to be A Good Thing. It would certainly help motivate those who are creating Web content in S. Asian languages to start using UTF-8 rather than custom encodings that rely on hacked fonts. But I'm not the one who decides what MS will and will not provide to users. - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485 E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
