Other Existing Unicode Support

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The Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU) is designed to complement existing Unicode support. Therefore, it does not duplicate existing APIs and technologies except where it is necessary for a consistent behavior across all versions of Windows.

Existing A/W Functions on Windows Me/98/95

The following functions on Windows Me/98/95 already exist in ANSI and Unicode versions. The Microsoft Layer for Unicode does not support these functions except where specifically overridden in order to support consistent behavior across all versions of Windows:

Existing Unicode-enabling Technologies

The Microsoft Layer for Unicode does not duplicate the following Unicode-enabling technologies.

Technology Description
Common Controls (commctrl32) Supports Unicode through CCM_GETUNICODEFORMAT, CCM_SETUNICODEFORMAT, and WM_NOTIFYFORMAT and controls such as TreeView and ListView.

On Windows Me/98/95, you must use comctl32.dll of version 5.80 or later. This ships with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0.
Input Method Editor (IME) Allows users to enter complex characters and symbols, such as Japanese Kanji, by using a standard keyboard.

Windows Me/98 supports the Unicode version of these functions except for ImmIsUIMessage.

On Windows 95, these functions are stubbed, thus you can statically link to the Unicode versions.
MLang, the MultiLanguage Object Provides services for applications on international issues, including conversion between code pages, font linking, code page "guessing", line breaking, and more.
Rich Edit 2.0 and later Provides a programming interface for formatting text. Rich Edit 2.0 supports Unicode, and Rich Edit 3.0 has expanded support for complex scripts, partly due to Uniscribe.
Uniscribe Supports the processing of complex scripts, that is, those scripts that need special processing to properly render them. It includes a subset of the features found in GDI+.