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and. Unicode. Chris Pratley Lead Program Manager Microsoft Office. Overview. Office Unicode strategy Implementation Benefits of Unicode to Office users Demo of Word2000. Office Unicode Strategy. Office97 driving factor s C ustomer s operate world-wide (US only 40% )
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and Unicode Chris Pratley Lead Program Manager Microsoft Office
Overview • Office Unicode strategy • Implementation • Benefits of Unicode to Office users • Demo of Word2000
Office Unicode Strategy • Office97 driving factors • Customers operate world-wide(US only 40%) • Need to handle multiple code pages in Europe • Office97 goals • Enable loss-less file exchange world-wide • Solve code page problems in Europe • Development efficiency for Asian and Euro versions • Unified source code base – but still different executables • Unified development process • Delta between language versions shrinks from 18 to 2 months • Lay foundation for future
Office2000 Unicode Strategy • Office2000 goals • Reduce Total Cost of Ownership for large corporations • Single version to deploy and administer globally • Configurable interface to handle local needs • Language of User Interface can be changed • Additional language features can be enabled as needed • Emulate any localized version • “Français”, “日本語”, “한글”, “עברית“,”عربي”, etc. • Streamline development process further • Core “US” team ships global product • Integrate bi-directional version team (Arabic, Hebrew) • Focus on needs of bilingual and multilingual users
Bi-Di US/Euro JPN KOR CHT CHS Thai Version SBCS 2.0/5.0 SBCS DBCS DBCS DBCS DBCS SBCS SBCS 6.0/95 SBCS Wide Wide Wide Wide SBCS Unicode 97 Unicode Unicode Unicode 2000 Unicode Unicode Today Future Unicode The Word Family Tree
Implementation • Core applications are Unicode internally • Word, Excel, PowerPoint (Office97) • Access (new in Office2000) • Databases are now Unicode • Remaining apps and applets • Inter-operate with Unicode apps • Will move to Unicode in next release
Implementation • Difficulties encountered with Unicode • Character code unification • Many punctuation were unified that are very different (especially full-width / half-width) • Interoperation with code-page based systems • If the code page is not known, converting data to Unicode is hard - lots of bugs here • Things that had worked “by accident” were broken • Educating test team about Unicode vs. MBCS
Implementation • Multi-font support groups characters • “ASCII” (0-127 range in ISO-8859-1) • “Asian” (all full-width “double byte”, plus half-width katakana) • “Complex Script” (composing scripts such as Bi-di, Thai, Indic) • “Other” (all other “single byte” characters) • Do not apply fonts to characters not supported by the font • Otherwise applying MS Pゴシックto “Montréal” would become “Montr⁞al” • Likewise applying Arial to “日本語” would become “” • Unified characters are hinted where necessary • Asian full-width “•••” never becomes European proportional “…” • Full-width Cyrillic and Greek never become proportional
Office Users Benefit • Single binary world-wide • Shared world-wide file formats • Multilingual word/data processing • Unicode HTML • Unicode e-mail (HTML, RTF, plain)
Single Binary • Easier to deploy, administer • One set-up image to install world-wide • One set of service packs for all machines • All features available in all “versions” • Still have local version packages • Multilingual users can use “foreign” features • User Interface language is configurable • Your language follows you when you travel • Major cost savings for customers • Less testing of corporate solutions • Lower internal tech support costs
Single File Format • Multinational corporations use Office • Need to exchange documents company-wide • Office unified file formats via Unicode • Word95 had 7 different file formats • Word97 had 1 file format but no editing, layout for languages covered by other versions • Word2000 adds editing, layout, and full-roundtrip
Multilingual Word/Data Processing • English Office2000: input/display/edit/layout of • European languages • any similar left-right scripts if fonts/NLS available • Asian languages • Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) • Japanese • Korean • Bi-directional languages (requires enabled system) • Arabic (incl. Farsi, Urdu) • Hebrew • Thai/Vietnamese/Indic require local version
Multilingual Word Processing • Most documents are monolingual • Most users are bilingual • Local language • English • Optimize UI for using one, two or three languages • Over 100 supported – rare usage • Detect over 20 languages as they are typed • Automatically install and use the correct proofing tools
Multilingual Word Processing • Proofing tool interfaces are Unicode • Spelling, Grammar, Hyphenation, Thesaurus • Tools for over 30 languages available • Most European languages • Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew • Additional tools • Traditional/Simplified Chinese conversion • Hangul/Hanja conversion • Japanese character usage consistency checker • Dictionaries & integration with Microsoft BookShelf
Multilingual Data Processing • Access databases are Unicode • Hook up to SQL7.0 Unicode databases • Excel workbooks are Unicode • Hook up to Unicode databases using OLE-DB • Create Pivot lists and manipulate Unicode data • PowerPoint creates multilingual multimedia • Use VBA to generate learning tools, multilingual kiosk demos
Unicode HTML • HTML is a companion file format • Roundtrip all formatting • Save to web servers • Roundtrip Unicode data in any encoding • UTF-8 and UTF-16 are supported too • HTML is tagged with encoding • URLs are UTF-8 • Plain text I/O in any encoding (Word)
Unicode e-mail • Office2000 provides fully multilingual email • HTML mail uses internet standards • All Unicode content preserved • Plugs into Outlook, Outlook Express, Exchange • Use Word to compose replies and new messages • Send in plain text, RTF, or HTML • All applications can mail documents as HTML
Future Directions • Work with Windows2000 towards a worldwide platform • Unicode 3.0 languages too • Fold in Thai, Vietnamese, Indic language support • Extend Unicode support to more applications • Outlook • FrontPage • PhotoDraw • Visual Basic Editor and Forms • Publisher • Works • Work with tools group (Visual Studio) to make globalization technology available to developers
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