loge.hixie.ch

Hixie's Natural Log

2003-03-27 20:19 UTC ☺ ☹ ☠

Yesterday I was puzzling over why Notepad couldn't show "☺ ☹ ☠" (a smiley face, a frowny face, and a skull and cross bones face) on most PCs, but could on mine.

Xiven, kerz and I finally worked out the solution. For some reason, ☺ U+263A WHITE SMILING FACE is considered to be western text, but ☹ U+2639 WHITE FROWNING FACE is only available to Windows who have the East Asian Text Support installed. Which isn't enabled by default on English Windows installations, even if you pick "Full Install". And which takes over 250MB.

What are Microsoft trying to say? You can only be unhappy if you're from the middle east?