by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2007/08/13 20:29 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2007/08/13/4374421.aspx
Let me see, it was back on July 27th that I posted Boot Camp 1.3 and MSKLC (also 1.3) -- excitement, enjoyment, and a wrinkle or three.
This post described various problems with custom keyboard layouts placed in directories other than the %WINDIR% one.
A couple of days later I sent mail to some of the folks at Apple I know due to my work with Unicode.
And then just two days ago, Boot Camp 1.4 was released!
Boot Camp 1.4 resolves every issue I posted about other than the 64-bit one (and 64-bit is not yet officially supported so I would not have expected it since it would likely come with the rest of the 64-bit drivers.
Less than 15 days after my report on the bug and its cause and recommended solution.
Talk about service!
Well, I am overstating things here for dramatic reasons. :-)
I was told after I reported the problem that it had been reported previously. My information may or may not have helped them with the fix (depending on whether they figured it out before my mail was sent, of course). And it may or may not have impacted the update itself.
I am guessing not so much, given the speed of the update. But the romantic in me wants to imagine that
But what I really like is the thought that there are people in both Apple and Microsoft who are excited about all this, and who are eager to see a good product.
If you are running Boot Camp, I highly recommend you install the Boot Camp 1.4 update. All you have to do is run the install, then burn the CD/DVD and run it on your Windows partition (you do not have to erase anything at all). This will give you the working keyboards on all versions of Windows under Boot Camp and therefore just be generally awesome. :-)
This post brought to you by ඉ (U+0d89, a.k.a. SINHALA LETTER IYANNA)
# Rosyna on 13 Aug 2007 11:25 PM:
Uhm, why do keyboard layouts need to be 64-bit? Why aren't they just files containing rulesets (and no code)?
# Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Aug 2007 11:31 PM:
Well, I can't answer a "why" question about an architecture that was created before I was within even 2000 miles of the people implementing it, but I can say that the architecture supports more complex layouts the East Asian keyboards and has been around and solid for a long time....