MS Mac Office 2004 was announced at MacWorld SF today. Does anyone know
whether this update finally brings the Unicode capabilities of the WinXP
version to the Mac OS X world?
I can now tell you that Mac Office 2004 does offer enhanced support for Unicode, in that it can input, edit, and display Unicode characters that are not part of any Mac OS legacy character set. I can't say yet to what extent the various components of Office support complex shaping behavior or bidirectional scripts (e.g., Arabic, Thai, Hindi), because I don't know. However, at the very least you will see access to expanded CJK repertoires, and access to languages like Icelandic and Greek.
Mac Office 2004 will also include fonts with larger repertoires than previous versions of Mac Office.
Here are some highlights from the PR information I received:
- Can input, print, and display more than 30 languages
- Larger font repertoires (e.g., Arial 296 glyphs -> 1192, MS Mincho ~9000 glyphs -> 16,031)
- Japanese fonts included (MS P Mincho and Gothic)
I've been told more details will be discussed in the coming months before MS Mac Office 2004 is released. Perhaps some of the Microsoft folks on this list can add more details? :-)
Deborah Goldsmith Manager, Fonts / Unicode liaison Apple Computer, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
