I came to know the availability of Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2003. As anybode would do, I opened the web-site and started reading the knowledgebase article accompanying the download. Here is the excerpt from the web-site –
“The text in Office Help is too small to read
You install Office 2003 and the Malayalam Language Interface Pack (LIP) for Microsoft Office 2003. When you view Office Help in an Office 2003 program, the text may be too small to read. For example, you start Word 2003 and then click WordPerfect Help on the Help menu. When you try to read the text, it is too small to read. This problem may occur when the Malayalam (Bengali) font is used to display the text.”
I was perplexed. Because AFAIK, Malayalam and Bengali LIPs for Office 2003 have not been released yet (as on Nov. 15, 2005). I checked the BhashaIndia web-site and Microsoft web-site. I could not find the Malayalam LIP for Microsoft Office 2003.
Did Microsoft goof up?
Interesting observation. BTW, what is meant by LIP?
LIP means Language Interface Pack. There is a difference between the Multilingual User-Interface (MUI) and the LIP. In case of MUI all the strings are localized into the language. Whereas in case of LIP, only 20% of the UI (menu commands) elements which are used 80% of the time are translated. LIP for Microsoft Office 2003 have been released in these languages so far -Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi and Punjabi. You will be tempted to ask the question "what about Hindi LIP?". The answer is that there is no LIP for Hindi. Instead, there is a full-fledged Hindi Office 2003 available. If you install Office 2003 English and Hindi versions, you can toggle between the two versions, without re-booting.
Just now I took a second look at the [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906338/|Microsoft web-site mentioned in my blog] above. For my pleasant surprise, I did not find the paragaraph quoted by me. They have removed the paragraph and corrected the goof up.