by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/07/05 08:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/07/05/3693610.aspx
Regular reader Ivan Petrov asked over in the Suggestion Box:
Hi Michael :-)
In 'Windows Vista', the 'Language bar' has an option to 'Auto adjust Language band position'. Will it be possible to add the same functionality to the 'Windows XP' 'Language bar'?!
Regards,
Ivan.
This kind of feature addition is not generally something that is done in service packs, since the cost of such an effort in terms of both resources and risk of regression simply outweighs the potential benefit....
Sorry about that (though glad you like the feature!).
This post brought to you by ∂ (U+2202, a.k.a. PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL)
# JohnGalt on 5 Jul 2007 2:33 PM:
I just want someone at Microsoft to realize that people in English Canada have a US keyboard, and DON'T ever type in French nor need the mappings for International French.
Which means that a computer setup in English Canada does not need to see the language toolbar, nor does it need to have all of those keyboard layouts that get spontaniously shifted when someone accidently hits the short cut keys.
For the 5 people that actually do need the other keyboard, they can add it....
# Ivan Petrov on 5 Jul 2007 3:00 PM:
Hi Michael
I'm really disappointed to hear from you that there are no plans to Backport to Windows XP this useful Language bar Feature!
I really don't think this is so harder to do that in XP.
And the words that 'the cost of such an effort in terms of both resources and risk of regression simply outweighs the potential benefit' are not convincing for me, since the work is already done for Vista, which means that Microsoft has realized this feature benefits!
Sorry about that Michael!
Let's see what comments for this post will post the other people here ...
Regards,
Ivan.
# Michael S. Kaplan on 5 Jul 2007 3:31 PM:
please note that much of the code surrounding the Language Bar and add input language ide was re-wrtten for Vista, so it is not an easy port to try to bring it into the older code base.
And generally speaking, cool features in new versions ared there to help people move to the new version, something that putting it in the old version anyway kind of works against....
# Dean Harding on 5 Jul 2007 7:39 PM:
If all the cool features in Version N+1 were backported to Version N, nobody would upgrade!