Windows technologies used for Indic support

By Cathy Wissink - Windows Globalization, Microsoft Corporation

Indic support on Windows 2000 and Windows XP

Windows has been only internationalized for Indic languages, although Microsoft is in the process of localizing Windows into Hindi. While there yet is no localized (or translated) UI for Indic languages, it is important to note that users of many Indic languages can already do the following on Windows 2000/XP:

• Input, display, format and print correctly formatted text;
• Create file names with Indic text;
• Correctly display and format culturally-correct dates, times, currencies and numbering schemes;
• Correctly sort and search on native text.

This is possible on any version of Windows, including all localized versions, English, or the Multilingual User Interface version. For example, this document and its corresponding set of slides were written with the Indic functionality included with the English version of Windows XP; all the Indic text in this script is input directly into the documents, with no bitmaps used.

Figure : Regional and Language Options on a Russian localized version of WMarathi (Devanagari) locale selected. The user interface is completely in Russian formatting for the Devanagari script strings (as seen in the long date format) windows with asian, but this also correct.