Update⁴ for Romanian and Bulgarian

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/05/08 08:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/05/08/2474854.aspx

Well, for starters, the update was updated again and they added Trebuchet MS to the mix -- turns out this font is used by some parts of Office that made the lack of coverage quite noticeable. :-)

And if you remember that first post I mentioned above where I was pining for a Romanian and/or Bulgarian translation for the download page of this particular update that was done in such a clear attempt to help the Romanian and Bulgarian user experiences?

Funny story about the Romanian page -- it uses the cedilla characters, not the comma below ones.

You see, when the original translation of the page was delivered and since it looked like the download page was using Tahoma (which was not a part of the update since it already had the characters), Judy figured the page should sdhow off the new characterx. Unfortunately, on an XP machine without the update, it didn't:

Of course anyone can make that mistake. They look quite similar when you look at the letters, except when you look at them side by side:

That's when you notice that Verdana is a bit more spread out (very careful eyes will see a few minor shape differences as well -- like the more open a and e for instance).

So you can think of Verdana as a Tahoma after a big Thanksgiving dinner or something.

The two fonts do come from the same designer (Matthew Carter). I wonder if he got to bill the full price for both fonts? :-)

(I'm just kidding about the billing; there are a whole lot of interesting differences in metrics and supported scripts and other features, and these fonts really worth every penny, for Windows and Office!)

Of course it is funny that a download page for a font package for a language would not include the right characters for the language....

Though on the other hand while I would find the implicit If the download page looks right, you don't need the download for its implicit "if you can read this you don't need glasses" eye chart allusion, it is more than likely that this would cause people to be unhappy if they saw null glyphs long before they realized the cute easter-egg-from-hell of a message that they were being subliminally sent.

In any case, I am really pleased that the work was done to make the Romanian version of the download page.

As you say, if I can see the page, then I don't need the update.

So it is not a bug, is a feature :-)

And you know what? Even if the page would use plain ASCII (no Romanian characters at all), it would still be cool that the update is available!

Thanks!

Well done !

As for "they added Trebuchet MS to the mix -- turns out this font is used by some parts of Office that made the lack of coverage quite noticeable. :-)" no, it is not this the (main) reason.

The problem lies with the Windows desktop appearance which uses the Trebuchet font in title bars when in "Windwos XP Style" mode. If (1) an application window title or web page title contains ș and/or ț wit comma below and (2) the desktop appearance is Windows XP Style, then (1) + (2) = the respective title bars looks either with blank squares or with obvious glyph substitution.

The only really stupid thing in the Microsoft's Romanian page I consider to be the title: "Actualizare de fonturi corespunzătoare extinderii Uniunii Europene" which means something like "Font update that corresponds to the EU expansion". This means that the font update is there only because the EU has expanded, not beacause the Romanian (and Bulgarian) languages have some rules that have to be applied, regardless the EU thing :-/

To Mihai: if you can see the page, then that means nothing :) The page uses the incorrect ş and/or ţ with cedillas *), so any (old) system will display them normally.

*) if in doubt, just copy & paste any portion of text into Wordpad, then Alt+X after any ş and/or ţ character; the result is 0x015E/F and/or 0x0162/3, which is wrong from the official perspective

Cristi

Cristi, didn't I say that the page was using the cedilla characters, and why? :-)

As for the reason that the update was done, even the title makes it clear that if nothing else the timing is based on the expansion of the EU to include Romania and Bulgaria -- and thus specific characters needed by the language of these countries was added.

:-)