Chris Pratley Group Program Manager Microsoft Word

Overview u Office Unicode history and strategy u Implementation u Benefits of Unicode to Office users u Demo of Word

Office97 Unicode Strategy u Office97 driving factors –Customers operate world-wide (US only 40%) –Need to handle multiple code pages in Europe u 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 u 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,,, 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

Office 10 Unicode Strategy u Office10 goals –Finish the globalization work begun in Office2000 Extend functionality to all applications Integrate Complex Scripts support (Indic, Thai, Vietnamese) –,,, Việt –Streamline development process further Single build process from start to finish Integrate complex scripts team –Deepen Unicode support Unicode 3.0 languages (,, etc.) UTF-16 (esp. plane 2: ) More complex script and limited combining diacritic coverage

The Word Family Tree Unicode Version US/EuroJPNKORCHTCHS Bi-DiThai/Indic DBCS SBCS 2.0/5.0 Wide SBCS 6.0/95 Unicode 97 A single Unicode release! 10 Unicode Unicode (now w/ Indic) 2000

Implementation u Core applications are Unicode internally –Word, Excel, PowerPoint (Office97) –Access, Publisher (new in Office2000) Databases and drivers are Unicode –Outlook, FrontPage (new in Office10) New Outlook local storage is Unicode

Implementation u Difficulties encountered with Unicode –Lack of full system support in Win9x –Every app needed different solution MFC-based apps were hardest –Missing system services (e.g. font-linking) –Interoperation with code-page based systems –Educating test team about Unicode Testing issues different vs. MBCS Lack of expertise in uncommon languages

Implementation u Office shared code services –Central Win32 Unicode text API wrappers Simulate nearly full support on Win9x –ExtTextOutW and others Provide optional font-linked output –Hardcode preferred fonts by script, style –User-specified font-fallbacks via reg key (if any) –Font categorization by script range (use MLANG.DLL) Font substituted if glyph not available –Word modifies font settings in the document –Other apps do only at display time –Insert Symbol dialog (Unicode 3.0 support)

Office Users Benefit u Single binary world-wide u Shared world-wide file formats u Multilingual word/data processing u Unicode HTML u Unicode (HTML, RTF, plain)

Single Binary u Easier to deploy, administer –One set-up image to install world-wide –One set of service packs for all machines u All features available in all versions –Still have local version packages –Multilingual users can use foreign features u User Interface language is configurable –Your language follows you when you travel u Major cost savings for customers –Less testing of corporate solutions –Lower internal tech support costs

Single File Format u Multinational corporations use Office –Need to exchange documents company-wide u 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 –Word10 adds full complex script support

Multilingual Usage u English Office10: input/display/edit/layout of –European languages any similar left-right scripts if fonts/NLS available –E.g. Canadian Syllabics (Inuktitut), Ethiopic, Cherokee Some combining diacritic support (African languages) –East Asian languages (including UTF-16 surrogates) Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean –Complex Script and Bi-directional scripts (need enabled system) Arabic (incl. Farsi, Urdu), Hebrew Thai Hindi, Tamil, Oriya, Telugu, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati, etc.

Multilingual Usage u Most documents are monolingual –Most users are bilingual Local language English u Optimize UI for using one, two or three languages –Over 100 supported – rare usage u Detect 20+ languages while typing (Word) –Automatically install and use the correct proofing tools u Plain text I/O in any encoding (Word, Excel)

Multilingual Word Processing u Proofing tool interfaces are Unicode –SDKs available for 3 rd party development u Tools for over 35 languages available –European languages, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Hindi… –Spelling, Grammar, Hyphenation, Thesaurus Traditional/Simplified Chinese conversion Japanese character usage consistency checker Hangul/Hanja conversion –Translation dictionaries (available offline) –Automatic translation web services

Multilingual Data Processing u Access databases are Unicode –Hook up to SQL7.x/2000 Unicode databases u Excel workbooks are Unicode –Hook up to Unicode databases using OLE-DB –Create Pivot lists and manipulate Unicode data u PowerPoint creates multilingual multimedia –Web sites, animations

Web sites u URLs transmitted in UTF-8 (before the ?) u FrontPage –Create and edit web pages in Unicode u Word –WYSWYG Web pages –Save in full or filtered HTML u IE5+ –Display Unicode 3.0 pages

Mail and PIM u Outlook –New local storage is Unicode Contacts, Calendar, Tasks etc. –Display and message handling all Unicode –Send/receive mail in any encoding

Unicode HTML u HTML is a companion file format –Roundtrip all formatting Optional HTML Filter cuts file size for publishing –Save to web servers directly –Roundtrip Unicode data in any encoding UTF-8 and UTF-16 are supported too –HTML is tagged with encoding

Unicode u Office2000/10 provides fully multilingual –HTML mail uses internet standards –All Unicode content preserved u Plugs into Outlook, Outlook Express, Exchange –Use Word to compose replies and new messages –Send in plain text, RTF, or HTML u All applications can mail documents as HTML

Future Directions u Help Windows build a worldwide platform –Ensure system support is useful to app writers –Unicode 3.0 languages too u Extend Unicode support to more apps –Visual Basic Editor and Forms

Microsoft Word10 on Whistler Demo

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