Windows® 7 entails interesting features including high-level factors such as the selection of backgrounds and themes (now including locally-relevant photos) which have been enhanced from such low-level factors as the supported characters in NTFS file names. We will describe certain features which are internally critical for proper support of the world’s many languages and cultures.
Fonts
Language and writing are at the heart of any culture and thus, language support for Microsoft fonts of Windows 7 is necessary to attract global users. Windows® 7 language significantly increases both the quality and range of Microsoft® fonts. There are fifty new fonts in Windows® 7.
In addition to new fonts, Microsoft® has also enhanced many of the existing fonts in Windows® 7. For example, 2000 glyphs have been added to Consolas®, Calibri®, Cambria® Bold and Cambria® Math. Most of the dramatic enhancements have been done to the non-Latin scripts. For example, Windows® 7 does a much better job in the placement of vowel marks and rendering the common Lam-Alef ligature in Arabic.
Because of backward compatibility issues, changes to Microsoft fonts are always difficult. Therefore, you must run extensive verification tests against the changes to ensure the font metrics and other tables are unchanged, whenever you change a font. The font team worked closely with the international application compatibility team to ensure that changes we made did not affect the order of glyphs within the font, thus providing backward compatibility.
Font Control Panel
Windows® 7 has many new and expanded Microsoft fonts. The operating system also lets users manage their fonts more easily.
The most interesting change in Windows® 7 language and writing is that the font icons now show much more information about the appearance of the font. The icon content gives a hint as to the glyph repertory of the font. To see how Non-Latin fonts are designed, they show typical glyphs from the script for the font. Another minute change is that some font icons are faded to indicate that fonts are installed, but hidden. In Windows® 7, the hidden fonts will not show by default in the ribbon and font dialogs.
Now, Windows® 7 users can see much more information about the font. They can sort fonts by style and information about the creator of the font, whether fonts are hidden. Font information files generally contain the information in the design language of the font. For e.g., a Spanish font might contain only information in Spanish language. We needed a solution that would work for all languages and for all fonts in Windows® 7.
