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From: spolsky-joel@cs.yale.edu (Joel Spolsky)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Windows 3.0 multitasking
Message-ID: <25992@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 4 Sep 90 14:07:21 GMT
References: <1614@s6.Morgan.COM>
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In article <1614@s6.Morgan.COM> amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt) writes:
>
>2. Why does Windows support a subset character set? This seems just
>out and out stupid to me. Does this mean that even if I create the
>appropriate APL font that many Windows apps (notepad, etc.) will
>not be able to use it? Under what circumstances would anyone writing
>a GUI think that a limited character set was a good idea?
>

Windows doesn't support a subset character set; it supports the ANSI
character set. It provides functions like OEMToAnsi and AnsiToOEM that
translate between the ANSI character set and the OEM character set
that is native to the computer upon which you are running windows. It
is just a coincidence that every computer that runs Windows uses the
IBM extended character set. Many foreign countries use different OEM
character sets.

You can create an APL font and use it; however you probably don't want
to use it as the system font (which is what Notepad uses) because your
menus and dialogs will look a bit funny :-) 

Joel Spolsky
spolsky@cs.yale.edu                                        Talk Hard.