I'm not a Klingon ( )

Shawn Steele's thoughts about Windows and .Net Framework globalization APIs

Code pages and security issues

One of the reasons I always suggest "Use Unicode!" is that there are security problems converting...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 01/17/2008

https://www.languagegeek.com/

https://www.languagegeek.com/ says it is dedicated to the promotion of Native North American...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 12/19/2007

Cantonese and Manderin language tagging.

The IETF "Language Tag Registry Update" working group has noted that lots of data is tagged as...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 12/14/2007

zh-Hans, zh-Hant and the "old" zh-CHS, zh-CHT

With Windows Vista and Microsoft .Net 2.0 (MS07-040 security patch) and 3.0+, we've started to use...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 12/13/2007

Michael has a blog about converting apps from ANSI to Unicode

Lots of apps are now Unicode, but some need to make the shift from ANSI (like Japanese shift-jis) to...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/21/2007

How do you make your regional and language options apply to new user accounts?

In general its a good idea to allow users to choose appropriate settings, but being able to adjust...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/04/2007

What's a genitive month name anyway?

I’m not a linguistic expert, so I’ll probably get this a bit wrong, but basically a genitive month...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 08/03/2007

"Windows Vista Command Line Configuration of International Settings" is on-line on MSDN

Generally its a good idea to let the users figure out their international settings, but sometimes...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 08/01/2007

Locale Builder Beta 2 is Available

The long awaited Microsoft Locale Builder Beta 2 is now available for immediate download at...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 07/31/2007

UTF-16, UTF-8 & UTF-32 update to conform with Unicode 5.0's security concerns.

My post Change to Unicode Encoding for Unicode 5.0 conformance now applies to .Net 2.0 with MS07-040...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 07/23/2007

Vista international configuration document on-line

As I've said before, its often good to honor the user's international settings, which they can set...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 07/11/2007

I see my favorite Ansi function has the behavior I want.

Occasionally I am asked about the A version of a W function. Ie: GetLocaleInfoA does something that...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/15/2007

Almost dismasted

As you may have guessed from the photo, I like to sail. I have an F-25 trimaran "Gazelle" that was...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/11/2007

Why can't we strip the diacritics?

We have some "best-fit" behavior which we generally consider to be "bad". Any loss of data is...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/08/2007

Encoder/Decoder Encoding fallbacks fail after 2GB of data has been converted

We have an unfortunate bug in .Net v2.0+ that causes encoding or decoding of more than 2GB of data...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/07/2007

Updated custom culture sample workaround for the .Net 2.0 Culture Name Change

I updated the sample for Vista changes .Net 2.0 Locale Names, sample work around custom...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/05/2007

How to tell if the collation version changed.

I added this to the msdn wiki for collation, but I'll blog about it here too. Occasionally we change...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 06/01/2007

DateTime.Parse() and DateTime.TryParse() fail in some cases

DateTime.Parse and DateTime.TryParse fail in .Net 2.0 if the user locale date override has a space...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/10/2007

MLang & MSXML6 doesn't like UTF-7

In some cases MLang (on which MSXML6 depends) can added extra ? to decoded UTF-7 data, which can...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/04/2007

How do I get HKSCS 2004 characters from Big-5 in .Net?

Well, that's pretty tricky. We provide the Microsoft Character Code Conversion Routines For...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/03/2007

How do I get my ANSI based application to run correctly?

A common question is "how do I get my ANSI based code page application to run on a system that has a...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/02/2007

Please avoid UTF-7

UTF-7 inherently some of the security issues that concern people about encodings. For example, by...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 05/01/2007

Understanding locale & culture "display" names

Between Microsoft.Net's CultureInfo and the Window's NLS GetLocaleInfoEx() APIs locales/cultures...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 04/26/2007

Garfield "It's All About..." Series App Compatibility and Windows Vista

I have two kids, and they have computers with kid's games. Kid's games are all really scary because...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 04/17/2007

Configuring Regional and Language Options International Settings with command line automation

Administrators like to set international settings from the command line. (Ie: Regional and Language...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 04/12/2007

Why Me? :-)

Our spam filters here are pretty good, but every once in a while I get a spam mail offers to sell me...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/26/2007

DateTime.Parse() fails when separator is " " (space) in .Net v2.0 RTM

In Whidbey (Microsoft.Net v2.0), DateTime.Parse() throws an exception if the date separator is a...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/19/2007

Hacking Code Pages, or "How to Totally Hose Your Machine AND Your Data".

WARNING: If you do any of the things in this blog you could end up with majorly messed up data, an...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/17/2007

.Net Framework Encoding Sample

A blog post I saw recently (A .Net Unicode Puzzle) reminded me of a sample we'd written for the .Net...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 03/05/2007

Code Pages, Unicode & Encodings

I hope to put some links to interesting posts about Code Pages/Unicode/Encodings here. Use Unicode!...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/27/2007

New "stickies"

I was having a hard time finding some of my own interesting posts, so I've decided to add a list...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/21/2007

Custom Cultures / Vista Custom Locales

I've blogged about Vista custom locales / .Net custom cultures. Here's an index of some of the more...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/21/2007

First day of week and the Vista Calendar Gadget

A user asked how to make the first day of the week on the Vista Calendar gadget a Monday because...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/20/2007

Remember not to use strings for random byte sequences.

A different, more secure, Shawn, blogged "Don't Roundtrip Ciphertext Via a String Encoding". I've...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 02/15/2007

Keyboard Layout Creator for Vista released.

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator version 1.4 has now been released. See...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 01/30/2007

Locale Builder Beta Expired - Beta 2 now available

The Microsoft locale builder beta download has expired.(Updated 31 July 2007)The locale builder beta...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 01/18/2007

Problems compiling resources in .Net 2.0 apps after updates.

[10 July 2007] The security patch of 10 July 2007...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/14/2006

Some custom locale examples.

Here're some custom locale examples in various formats (1.8 MB .zipped download). These are to be...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/07/2006

Expected names of Microsoft Windows "ANSI" Code Pages (Encodings)

I was asked about our use of the windows "ansi" code page names, as used in things like MIME types,...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 11/06/2006

Vista changes .Net 2.0 Locale Names, sample work around custom cultures/locales

[10 July 2007] The recent security patch to .Net changed the behavior on other Windows versions as...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/13/2006

Example of overriding your own Encoding.

Previously I wrote about the Best Way to Make Your Own Encoding, but didn't include an example, so...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/12/2006

Rambling about RFC 4690 and IDN

There's a reasonably new RFC 4690 ( https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4690.txt ) that raises a bunch of...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/10/2006

RFC 3066 has been replaced by RFC 4646

I've mentioned RFC 3066, which describes locale names such as en-US, in some posts. Its now finally...

Author: Shawn Steele (MSFT) Date: 10/05/2006

<Previous Next>