PUB: Multi-Language Support in Microsoft Publisher (140845)

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Multilingual support under Windows 95 consists of the following separate areas: regional settings, international keyboard layouts, and international fonts.

Regional Settings

These preferences are controlled by the Regional Settings control panel. These preferences include measurement system, currency format, thousands separator, and so on. Publisher follows the preferences made here.

Keyboard Layouts

You can add international keyboard layouts by using the Keyboard control panel. Once you install these layouts, you can toggle between them using a shortcut key (ALT+LEFT SHIFT is the default) or by clicking an icon on the taskbar. Publisher uses the current keyboard layout, whatever it is.

International Fonts

Some of the fonts that come with Windows 95 include variations for other languages. These fonts, which include Arial and Times New Roman, contain over 600 different characters. TrueType fonts that do not include international variations contain up to 256 characters. The multilingual variations are included in Western, Greek, Cyrillic, and Turkish.

To access the international variations of these fonts, a program has to support a set of Windows programming commands called Unicode. Unicode is fully implemented in Windows NT, but only partially in Windows 95.

Programs such as Word version 6.0 for Windows, Word version 7.0 for Windows 95, and WordPad support the Unicode commands necessary to access the international font variations. Publisher does not. Publisher can only use the international variation that is the primary one used by Windows. If you have a Greek version of Windows 95, Publisher uses the Greek character set. If you have a Russian version of Windows 95, Publisher uses the Cyrillic variation of the international fonts.

NOTE: While Publisher does support alternative keyboard layouts, they are not particularly useful without the corresponding alternative character sets. For example, if you use the Belarusian keyboard layout on a non-Cyrillic version of Windows, your text will appear in Publisher as a series of extended characters.