by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2012/06/12 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2012/06/12/10318599.aspx
Over in the Suggestion Box, metathinker asked:
In the Wikipedia page on the classic Mongolian script), it briefly mentions some problems with using Mongolian on computers.
Among these, it links to Microsoft KB article 929763, which details "some problems" with the OpenType layout data for Vista's new font Mongolian Baiti, which (in the KB's own words!) "makes the font almost unusable in Windows Vista."
I sense a bit of a story there. Perhaps someday you will be ready to tell it, Michael?
I'm not sure there's truly a "story" here, but I can tell what I know of it. :-)
The version of the font that shipped in original RTM version of Vista did indeed have the issue:
The OpenType Layout data of the Mongolian Baiti font is used to display traditional Mongolian text. The OpenType Layout data affects various contextual glyph transformations. This issue occurs because of some problems in the OpenType Layout data in the Mongolian Baiti font file.
However, as the KB article indicates, this weas fixed in version 5.01 of the font.
That version was shipped an update for Vista, an update that was rolled up into SP1.
And that update also shipped with Windows Server 2008.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 also both shipped with this update.
So, yes there is a bug here - one that shipped over half a decade ago.
And quickly fixed, as well.
And it stayed fixed in subsequent releases.
The real bug (IMHO) is in a Wikipedia article that focuses that far n the past as proof that Unicode's encoding of Mongolian is buggy. I thought Wikipedia was supposed to not provide bias against Unicode, Microsoft, or Firefox without substantive information about the problem, a problem of which even the most recent version of the issuses sectin of the page appears to be guilty?
Perhaps Wikipedia could fix that bug, and help describe the actual issues! :-)
metathinker on 12 Jun 2012 7:21 AM:
Well, maybe the authors of that particular wiki article had a bit too much bitter experience trying to make Mongolian work, which has colored their writing a bit...
Anyway, thanks kindly, Michael!
WndSks on 12 Jun 2012 7:37 AM:
It is a wiki so you could just edit it yourself. Not sure how the editors feel if you cite your own blog post tho so maybe somebody else should do the edit...
Joshua on 12 Jun 2012 2:49 PM:
Sisyphus, move this rock to the mountain that is complete Unicode rendering.
cheong00 on 12 Jun 2012 8:36 PM:
Agreed Michael could have edited with Wiki article to reflect the fix. In fact Wikipedia's policy welcome subject matter experts to review their articles, so I think adding a patch status update would be appropiate.
Idrc on 12 Jun 2012 11:20 PM:
Michael, please have a look @ the table "Products that supply this font" on www.microsoft.com/.../font.aspx regarding the version information of Vista vs. 2008.