Unicode and Windows Vista (repost)

[Devin Asay]

On May 3, 2010, at 5:51 AM, Richmond Mathewson wrote:

>  I am reposting this as it seems to have got lost
> amongst the recent cruft. It actually concerns
> an aspect of RunRev programming!

You should know better; this is the "Rant and Rave About All Things Peripherally Related to Rev" list. What you want is the "How to Use Revolution" list. ;-/
> 
> 	
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Yesterday I wrote:
> -----------------------------------------------------
> 
> Recently I had a slightly worrying post from a chap
> attempting to use my Devawriter on a computer
> running Windows Vista.
> 
> The problem is that when Devawriter calls a Unicode
> character that is not meant to move the cursor/insert place
> forward, merely print something either above or beneath
> the preceding character it does not; while printing the
> character it also moves the insert forward so that
> everything comes out incorrectly.
> 
> I tried to duplicate this problem on Mac and Windows XP
> (not having access to Vista) and was unable to. Luckily
> this chap managed to get hold of a machine running XP
> and has had no further problems.
> 
> I would be extremely grateful if anybody has any ideas
> and/or advice regarding this problem, as it is a real
> problem. Obviously Vista does not "play ball" with
> Unicode fonts in RunRev in quite the same way that
> Mac and XP do.

Odd that you just ran into this with Win 7. Because I just noticed exactly the same problem in Snow Leopard. I have a stack that lists Russian vocabulary words, which has an option of showing the stressed syllables using one of these "overstrike" Unicode characters. Specifically, I use an acute accent from the unicode 03 section (Diacriticals, Greek, Coptic), character 0x301, or decimal 769. It has the effect of placing the accent over the previous character.

But suddenly, in Snow Leopard, what has worked perfectly in Leopard and earlier and Win XP now places the accent over the *following*  character, which sounds just like what your Win 7 user is experiencing. 

So far this is just another data point that may help you figure out what's going on. I haven't come up with a solution yet. I do have a hunch, though. I wonder if both SnoLeo and Win 7 have "fixed" something in their unicode engines which slightly breaks Rev's unicode implementation.

I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

Regards,

Devin


Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University