http://localhost:1313/tags/windows/ Recent content in Windows on UberMongoose Hugo en-us Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:46:55 +0530 http://localhost:1313/post/unicode-and-windows/ Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:46:55 +0530 http://localhost:1313/post/unicode-and-windows/ <p>Unicode string support in Windows is a strange beast.</p> <p>When Microsoft hired Dave Cutler and others to write a new OS for them they were thinking about writing a new version of OS/2. In fact the new Microsoft OS was a combined effort by Microsoft and IBM that would have resulted in OS/2 version 3.0 if not for the success of Microsoft’s own Windows 3 which made them reconsider that approach. At the eleventh hour they shifted their API from the extended OS/2 API that was to be the way things got done on the new OS to an extended version of the Windows API. This last minute change was possible due to some clever trickery on the part of the programmers who wrote the new Windows OS but it resulted in a strange API, especially when it came to string handling in the new OS known to history as Windows NT 3.1.</p>