Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Windows 7 Language: A global approach

Since its anticipation Microsoft has always targeted for global customer base. Achieving such a goal is not an easy task. You have to put a lot of efforts to manage the Global Customer. The most prominent topic is to localized Windows 7 Language into different languages used across the world. Building global software is a team work.
Though English is the basic language but if we are talking about a global experience it can't come without the introduction of Non-Latin script. Hence the multi-lingual concept was required for Windows 7 Lanuage. Since the goal of Windows 7 is to deliver exciting features that benefit users worldwide as well as features that make Windows feel local to every user. Windows 7's focus is to improve the fundamental scenarios of performance and reliability, for a great customer experience in every language and every country.
The international features of Windows 7 Language are pervasive across the system, from low-level aspects as the supported characters in NTFS file names (now upgraded to match Unicode 5.1) to high-level aspects as the selection of backgrounds and themes (now including locally-relevant photos). However there are certain features that are intrinsically critical for proper support of the world’s many languages and cultures. Lets have a look some of those here.
Fonts
Language and writing are at the core of any culture and thus support for fonts is essential to supporting international users. Windows 7 Language have wide range and quality of fonts it has added fifty more fonts in it.
Windows 7 will be the first version of Windows to ship with more fonts for non-Latin scripts than for Latin-based scripts. One major area of improvement is for the languages of India. To the nine (9) fonts for Indian languages that shipped in Vista, Windows 7 adds forty (40) more. Besides new fonts, Windows 7 has also improved many of the existing fonts. For example, two thousand (2,000) glyphs to Consolas, Calibri, Cambria Bold, and Cambria Math. But the most dramatic improvements have been to some of the non-Latin scripts. For example, Windows 7 Language does a much better job rendering the common Lam-Alef ligature in Arabic and in the placement of vowel marks.
Its always tricky to amend any change in fonts because of backwards compatibility issues. For example, if a character changes width or position, it may cause existing documents to reflow (repaginate), which is unacceptable. Therefore after creating any change in font, its essential to run extensive verification tests against the changes to ensure the font metrics and other tables are unchanged. The font team worked closely with the international application compatibility team to ensure that changes we made did not affect the order of glyphs within the font, thus providing backward compatibility.

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