Typing In Thai on Windows or MacOS
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Type-Thai-PC-Mac-t27246.html

Microsoft Virtual Keyboard for Typing in Thai
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Microsoft-Visual-Keyboard-Program-t29891.html

Obtaining Thai Fonts for Your Computer
http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Fonts-Information-t46220.html

And once you can type on your keyboard using Thai fonts, consider keyboard overlays to make it easier to figure out which keys make which letters.

I just ordered some from: http://www.datacal.com

They have clear self-adhesive stickers with either blue characters (for white and off-white keyboards) as well as with white characters (for black keyboards).

...or next time you go to Thailand, buy a keyboard showing Thai characters - just 200-300 baht.

Is there a way to only increase the size of the Thai font in your internet browser (and not the Roman font)? I am using firefox and IE on windows and konqueror and firefox on linux.

I put off learning to type Thai for ages as I never had a keyboard that displayed Thai characters, At the time it seemed like a good excuse, but it shouldn't be . . . . After a trip to Pantip plaza and a purchase of a USB Thai keyboard and a virtual typing tutor program, I changed the settings in control panels to show the language bar and add Thai. After 3 weeks I finished with the program, and decided to ditch the keyboard and just use the standard Roman keyboard on my laptop, if you learn with a good program you memorize where the correct keys are and what finger to use, with no need to visually look at the keyboard

On firefox pressing alt + will increase the size (alt - will decrease)


totster

Sorry I don't know either and it is a real problem.
When using mixed Thai and English fonts the English fonts are very large.
Yet if the Thai fonts were are smaller they would be difficult to read.
I am also trying to install Kymer fonts and they are less well supported than Thai.
I guess that it is just a problem which has not been addressed yet.
It costs time and money to create fonts.
One day I am sure that there will be a way to adjust the two fonts independently.
Of course it is possible to do anything even now. It is just very difficult.
Have you looked at the Thai newspaper sites.
They manage some weird and wonderful things which I find very difficult to understand.
Like http://www.thairath.co.th/
and
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-874">
and unicode.
Sorry I am rambling a bit but maybe this helps a bit.

There is a plug-in written by Mike of www.thai2english.com to increase the display of Thai font in Firefox 2


Right Click Here for the plug-in

Then select "Save Link As" to save the file largethai.xpi to your harddisk


Installation instruction
-------------------------
1. Select FILE from pull-down menu
2. Select Open File
3. From Open dialogue: Pick largethai.xpi you downloaded.
4. Wait for installation to complete.
5. Click Install Now button in Software Installation dialogue.
6. Restart Firefox.
7. Click RIGHT mouse and select Increase Thai Text Size.

You should notice an increase in the size of all the Thai fonts where the rest remain the same.

Enjoy

...what if one needs a localized version of Vista? How to you purchase yours?

If you need Vista in Thai or English I guess you could just head to the nearest computer store. If by 'localized' you mean a version in a language other than Thai or English, you may find it very difficult to find one for sale in Thailand.

If you have a reasonably fast Internet connection (and a download manager that supports resume, otherwise you can get cut off in the middle of the file and have to start all over again) it may be possible to download it from Microsoft's website in your language - check that out first. You can of course also contact Microsoft, explain your situation and ask them what solution they can offer you.

Personally I use XP Pro Swedish, and had a friend buy it for me in Sweden, as he was coming over here on holiday.

To read Thai messages:
Any browser or email program will have a Character Encoding menu item under the View menu. If you can't read something that you believe was written in Thai, go to the View - Character Encoding menu and select TIS-620. If that doesn't work, then try UTF-8. If neither of those work, then try ISO-8859-11 or Windows-874. If none of these work, then the message was probably not written in Thai.

To create Thai messages (without a Thai keyboard):
Go to http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/user/iwi/charmap.html, select "0E: Thai, Lao" from the selection box, and begin clicking on Thai letters.

Here is some more detailed information for those who are interested.

There are several character encodings that support Thai. I have my system set to use UTF-8 by default. UTF-8 includes characters for dozens of languages, including Thai. For those of you located in Thailand, your computer is likely using TIS-620 (Thai Industry Standard character encoding) by default. TIS-620 only includes Thai and western characters, what you would see on a standard Thai keyboard. There is also ISO-8859-11 and Microsoft's Windows-874 encoding for the Thai language, both of which are almost identical to TIS-620. UTF-8 and TIS-620 are by far the most common encodings for the Thai language. When I receive emails from Thailand, my friends' computers all use TIS-620, but my system uses UTF-8, so I always have to change the encoding so that I can read their messages. This is perfectly normal.

Briefly, the reason there are multiple character encodings for the same language is because there are hundreds (maybe even a few thousand) languages in the world and many have their own scripts. Chinese alone has about 10,000 different possible characters. In order to send data around via email or the web and represent all of those characters, each character would have to be represented with 8 or 10 bytes instead of 1 to 4 bytes. In order to control the amount of data being sent around, we use character encodings, each of which includes a specific set of languages.

If you are technically minded and still want to learn more about character encodings, http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/charset.html#h-5.2 is a good place to start.

This post has been edited by LonelyAmerican: 2007-04-05 00:42:57

Hi all:
My secret to input Thai scripts quickly is to use Japanese IME with user’s dictionary created by myself.
The user’s dictionary contains all of Thai scripts plus Thai words, which are often to be used to make sentences in Thai.
For example:
for Thai alphabetic scripts,
ก for kai or k
ข for kha or kh
ค for khu or kh
for Thai words,
ความ for khwaam
สามารถ for s<aam>aat
ประชาธิปไตย for prachaathippatai
ผม for phom or ph<om
note:
It is not always necessary to use tones but for some words it is easier to identify with tones.
Blind touch method (without watching keyboard) can be used for my system, it is not stressful at all and I can type quicker than ordinary Thai people. No need to use kanji character but only Thai scripts and roman alphabetic letters.
Simple.
tones symbols:
flat อ
low อ,
falling อ>
high อ’
rising อ<

If you could post the custom dictionary I'd appreciate it!

Grashopa:
I had been very busy from the end of the last year to the beginning of New Year to attend many parties. If you use windows xp English version, Japanese front-end processor (IME) is attached to the program, so it is very simple to make a copy of my user dictionary into your Pc’s IME. This IME is written in English so you won’t have any problem. One thing I would like to point out is that it must be with ms-excel or ms-words to write in Thai language together with Thai font such as Cordia New etc.
There is no completion date for my user dictionary because it evolves day by day slowly. I will upload my user dictionary to thaivisa forum. If you might be in a hurry, please send me e-mail (kiyoshimat2000@yahoo.co.jp) so I can send you the user dictionary as an attachment.
Thank you for your interest in the method.

To Grashopa and anybody who is interested in learning Thai language：
I present you Thai-Japanese-English dictionary for everybody’s daily use together with user dictionary for easy input of Thai scripts into your Pc.
http://www.geocities.jp/srachai2000/thai_dic_2.htm
I hope it helps you.

Hi all.

I have Windows XP English, but I am German.
So in my regional settings in the control panel I changed the "language for non-unicode programs" to German.
But now I cannot use my Thai-English Dictionary called "ThaiSoftware Dictionary" anymore.
Furthermore I cannot access the settings of my graphic card anymore.
All I see in these and some other programs are questions marks.

Do I understand that right:?
Obviously these programs are not programmed in UTF which means I cannot use them anymore - or on the other hand I have to stop to support my German non-UTF-programs to get my dictionary work again?.
If so, does anybody knows a good English-Thai Dictionary for Windows that is Unicode-based?
Or is there another possibility?

Thanks a lot

Unfortunately, I can only nod in sympathy. I am Swedish, and have the exact same problem as you.

I would love to be proven wrong, but it appears that Microsoft does not see us Northern European users who need Asian language support in parallel with English and our mother tongue, as a very important group.

Have you tried to create another user account? I'm not sure because I haven't tried this myself, but it might be possible to set the language for non-unicode programs as German in you main account and Thai in the new account. Then you could just switch user accounts when needed.

I just downloaded th new firefox and this plug in no longer works.. I wouldnt have downloaded the new firefox had I known this as i use this plug in alot. Anyone know if there is a new version for the latest firefox?

thanks

Sometimes you can fix that by downloading the .xpi file to your desktop, then:
1. change the file extension from .xpi to .zip and unzip the contents
2. open up the .rdf file in Notepad
3. change the maxversion to the version of your Firefox eg 3.0.4 and save
4. zip up all the files again that you previously unzipped
5. change the extension back to .xpi
6 open up Firefox then drag the xpi file onto Firefox and follow the prompts thereafter.

thanks... i will try that and report back...

sounds a bit difficult for me though!

You can get the stickers for your keyboard at any computer store here for like 30 baht. They typically come in two sizes, normal keyboard size and laptop size. The stickers last about two years before they wear out.

Go to the bottom of this page to download a butt load of Thai fonts:
http://www.learnthaiculture.com/thai_extras.shtml

Also, if you are on a computer that doesn't support Thai, use this to type:
http://www.learnthaiculture.com/thai_typer.html

I hope my information below is not redundant.

There 2 ways to have Thai character in your computer

1. If your computer is Windows XP, then you can enable the Thai character and switch between English and Thai; I provide the step-by-step instruction at the end of this posting, if you choose this method.
2. Go to http://english-thai-dictionary.com/index.p...on=thaikeyboard and use the virtual keyboard to get the Thai character, which you want to type, then using the copy-paste to put it into your document/email.

I personally like the second method because my keyboard is not a Thai keyboard (hence I need layout of Thai keyboard printed on a paper) and I am too lazy to switch back and forth between English and Thai language (although it is a matter of 2 clicks or 2 buttons)

Step-by-step of enabling Thai character in Windows XP computer:

• Make sure that you have your Windows installation CD handy
• Open control panel
• Double click on "Regional and Language Options" icon
• Click "Languages" tab
• Click "Details" button
• Click "Add" button
• Select Thai as "Input language" and "Keyboard layout"; For my computer, I selected both Kedmanee and Pattachote; I don't know what it is but it works well in my system until now
• Click "OK" button in "Add Input Language" window
• Click "Apply" button in "Text Services and Input Languages" window; You may need your Windows installation CD at this stage
• Back to "Text Services and Input Languages" window, in "Setting" tab, you can select on how to switch between English character and Thai character by clicking "Key Settings" button

Somehow you may find that this step-by-step is still confusing, then please feel free to drop your questions here (please don't pm me), I'll try to answer it.

Before going out to get my stickers (notebook and small desk) I was researching what difference there was between kedmanee and pattachote. I was led to rikker.blogspot and this free Thai typing tutor.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/gurce/thai/type/

anyone know how to isolate the thai language files on one computer so that they can be moved to another?

i do not have the windows disk with me anymore and the thai files therefore cannot be installed on my laptop. my desktop however, does have them already installed.