1 / 22

A Case Study on Unicode Integration: Microsoft Visual Basic, v 3.0 to v. 7.0

Michael S. Kaplan Software Design Engineer Microsoft. A Case Study on Unicode Integration: Microsoft Visual Basic, v 3.0 to v. 7.0. http://www.i18nWithVB.com/. DISCLAIMER. The purpose(s) of Visual Basic. Making Windows development easier Promote the Windows platform through ISVs who use it

udell
Download Presentation

A Case Study on Unicode Integration: Microsoft Visual Basic, v 3.0 to v. 7.0

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Michael S. Kaplan Software Design Engineer Microsoft A Case Study on Unicode Integration: Microsoft Visual Basic, v 3.0 to v. 7.0 http://www.i18nWithVB.com/

  2. DISCLAIMER San Jose, California (IUC22)

  3. The purpose(s) of Visual Basic • Making Windows development easier • Promote the Windows platform through ISVs who use it • The "apple in Bill's eye" San Jose, California (IUC22)

  4. International support in the early versions (1.0 – 3.0) • Very limited! • Multiple versions of the product codebase • Bugs found in one language version often not fixed elsewhere • NO Unicode support San Jose, California (IUC22)

  5. VB 4.0 - a time for choices San Jose, California (IUC22)

  6. Keep VB in 16 bit, and take advantage of the support for Win16 applications • Easy for VB to do • Useless for the Win32 platform itself • No international support at all San Jose, California (IUC22)

  7. Move VB to Win32 entirely, leveraging the emerging NT platform's full support of Unicode through its "W" APIs. • Great international solution • Poor solution for Windows 95 San Jose, California (IUC22)

  8. Move VB to Win32 but still with a code page model rather than a Unicode one, using the "A" APIs. • Easiest to do • Less multilingual support San Jose, California (IUC22)

  9. A hybrid technique ("A" APIs on Win9x, "W" APIs on NT) • Most complicated to do • Best international support • Good leveraging of the best features of each platform San Jose, California (IUC22)

  10. What the VB team actually did • Using COM • Porting the original VB • Working with the volume platform (Windows 95) San Jose, California (IUC22)

  11. Where COM fits in • Benefits to VB by using COM • Benefits to COM by VB being a client San Jose, California (IUC22)

  12. The birth of "UniMess" • An attempt to keep the conversion from VB3 to VB4 simple • From simplicity comes confusion San Jose, California (IUC22)

  13. The cousin of UniMess:Using LCIDs for code pages • COM's biggest drawback • Once again, simplicity causes problems San Jose, California (IUC22)

  14. Beyond UniMess • Intrinsic function woes • Source file encoding compatibility • Trouble with the Ruby forms package • Difficulties with API calls • Problems with file i/o San Jose, California (IUC22)

  15. The verdict for VB4? San Jose, California (IUC22)

  16. Changes in VB5 • Minor functionality enhancements • No major changes for Unicode support • Some work with the StrConv function San Jose, California (IUC22)

  17. Changes in VB6 • More work with StrConv • A lot of VB-specific code moved to COM • A lot of other VB-specific functionality now using existing COM methods San Jose, California (IUC22)

  18. And then came VB.NET • System.Text • System.Globalization • System.Resources • The [Unicode] Visual Studio IDE • [Mostly] Unicode controls in WinForms San Jose, California (IUC22)

  19. Lessons learned • Was VB4 a good Unicode integration? • Were VB5 and VB6 good integrations? • What about VB.NET? San Jose, California (IUC22)

  20. Summary of lessons learned • Backwards compatibility is crucial • Conversion between Unicode and other encodings is crucial • New data types need new constructs • Understand why you are supporting Unicode (the primary reasons for that support) • Know what supplementary benefits you will gain from Unicode San Jose, California (IUC22)

  21. Questions? San Jose, California (IUC22)

  22. A Case Study on Unicode Integration: Microsoft Visual Basic, v 3.0 to v. 7.0 San Jose, California (IUC22)

More Related