Chris PratleyChris PratleyGroup Program ManagerGroup Program Manager

Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word

Overview

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

Office97 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” , “ عربي“,”עברית ”, 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

Office10 goals– Finish the globalization work begun in Office2000

• Extend functionality to all applications• Integrate Complex Scripts support (Indic, Thai, Vietnamese)

– हि�नदी�, தமி�ழி�ல, ภาษาไทย, Viêt 

– Streamline development process further• Single build process from start to finish • Integrate complex scripts team

– Deepen Unicode support• Unicode 3.0 languages ( , ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ  አማርኛ, etc.)• UTF-16 (esp. plane 2: 𧆓𧆓𧆓𧆓 )• More complex script and limited combining diacritic coverage

The Word Family Tree

Unicode

Version US/Euro JPN KOR CHT CHS Bi-DiThai/Indic

DBCS DBCS DBCS DBCSSBCS SBCS SBCS2.0/5.0

Wide Wide Wide WideSBCS SBCS SBCS6.0/95

Unicode Unicode Unicode97

A single Unicode release!

“10”

Unicode Unicode(now w/ Indic)

2000

Implementation

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

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

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

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

– Word10 adds full complex script support

Multilingual Usage

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

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 20+ languages while typing (Word)– Automatically install and use the correct proofing tools

Plain text I/O in any encoding (Word, Excel)

Multilingual Word Processing

Proofing tool interfaces are Unicode– SDKs available for 3rd party development

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

Access databases are Unicode– Hook up to SQL7.x/2000 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– Web sites, animations

Web sites

URLs transmitted in UTF-8 (before the “?”) FrontPage

– Create and edit web pages in Unicode Word

– WYSWYG Web pages– Save in full or “filtered” HTML

IE5+– Display Unicode 3.0 pages

Mail and PIM

Outlook– New local storage is Unicode

• Contacts, Calendar, Tasks etc.

– Display and message handling all Unicode– Send/receive mail in any encoding

Unicode HTML

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 e-mail

Office2000/10 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

Help Windows build a worldwide platform– Ensure system support is useful to app writers– Unicode 3.0 languages too

Extend Unicode support to more apps– Visual Basic Editor and Forms

Microsoft “Word10” Microsoft “Word10” onon

“Whistler”“Whistler”

Demo

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