How To Type In Thai On A PC And Mac

[RDN]

Windows XP operating system:

Click START, open CONTROL PANEL. Select REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE OPTIONS. Click on LANGUAGE tab, then DETAILS and SETTINGS tab. Click ADD and then select THAI from the drop down INPUT LANGUAGE box and THAI KEDMANEE from the drop down KEYBOARD LAYOUT box. Click OKAY, OKAY, APPLY, OKAY. Thai language should then be installed.

One possible problem is that files for complex scripts may not have been installed, If so, then on Windows XP, as an administrator:

Click START, open CONTROL PANEL. Select REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE OPTIONS. Click on LANGUAGE tab, tick 'Install files for complex script...' and click OK etc.

If this doesn't work, there are various web pages you can use, e.g. Thai Text Entry Version 1.2 It enables you to switch input methods, so it may be sensitive to browser differences. (I've just discovered that it gets a bit sick on Mozilla if you switch the encoding away from 'Unicode (UTF-8)', which is the encoding declared on the page. IE6 doesn't seem to be affected by such a switch.)

As to fonts, you just drag the font file onto the fonts directory, e.g. C:\WINDOWS\FONTS.

The consonants, subscript vowels, superscript tones and over marks in the vertical stack are typed in the order:

1) Consonant first.

2) Everything else in order from bottom to top, so tone marks come last.

Preposed vowels (เ แ ไ ใ โ) and postposed vowels (า ำ ะ) are typed independently, as though they were consonants. Note that น้ำ is typed in the order: consonant, tonemark, vowel. Do not type ำ as two symbols - if you do, most search software will not equate it to ำ as a single symbol.

On Thaivisa, remember to make Thai text 'large' (I use size 7) to make it legible.

On a Mac with OS/X:

Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> "International" Preference Pane -> Input Menu

Click on "Thai" check box

Click on "Show input menu in menu bar"

Quit System Preferences

The input menu will appear in the menu bar at the far right. It is represented by the flag of the country of the current input language. (US flag for US English, British flag for real English, Thai flag for....)

Click on the flag and select the language of choice.

If you need help with the keyboard, click on the flag and select "Show Keyboard Viewer". You can use the Keyboard Viewer for actual input or just as a map.

For the Mac Safari web browser you have to set the Text Encoding method to Unicode or Thai:

View -> Text Encoding -> Unicode

or

View -> Text Encoding -> Thai

---------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to Richard W for the WinXP instructions and mgnewman for the Mac/OSX instructions. As more information is found, these instructions will be updated.

Edited February 13, 2005 by RDN

[Khutan]

RDN;

Without trying to sound like a total pratt,

Having a keyboard with the Thai Key-tops helps as well.

You can buy them very cheaply at most computer shops, then you don't have to use the stickers if your keyboard only has the "western" Keytops.

RDN Edit:

For sure a Thai keyboard is easy to get and install, but I think you meant to post this on the original thread? http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27219

Anyway, I too have a USB Thai keyboard - "Genius brand, model KU-0138". But I also have an external hard drive connected to my lap-top's only USB port, and it doesn't work too well sharing the port with another device. Hence, in the other topic, I talked about the "On-Screen Keyboard". For short periods, it's OK - you just see a normal keyboard until you switch language using the Language Bar. Then the keys change to the Kedmanee keyboard and - using the mouse - you can type in Thai. But if I want to do a lot of typing, I will plug in the USB keyboard.

I will add information later about keyboards to the pinned first post above.

Edited February 13, 2005 by RDN

[Boon Mee]

Having a keyboard with the Thai Key-tops helps as well.

You can buy them very cheaply at most computer shops

I just bought a decent one at Pantip Plaza for 180 Baht.

Keystrokes aren't as firm as say a Dell keyboard, but it works pretty good for the money.

[Jockstar]

I had the same problem. My missus wanted to make up a rough draft on word for our wedding invitations. All well and good in English. But just couldn't get the Thai to work. Even by changing the settings said before. Then by pure accident i clicked on the EN sign at the bottom right hand corner. This gave me the option to change to Thai. And hey presto it worked. So i got brownie points for that. Since the missus was getting a little pissed off. Now shes as happy as a pig in <deleted>. AH ! The small things that make our life easy.

[vuka]

....Click on "Show input menu in menu bar"

Quit System Preferences

The input menu will appear in the menu bar at the far right. It is represented by the flag of the country of the current input language. (US flag for US English, British flag for real English, Thai flag for....)

Click on the flag and select the language of choice.

If you need help with the keyboard, click on the flag and select "Show Keyboard Viewer". You can use the Keyboard Viewer for actual input or just as a map.

For the Mac Safari web browser you have to set the Text Encoding method to Unicode or Thai:

View -> Text Encoding -> Unicode

or

View -> Text Encoding -> Thai

I have macos10.2.8 and I'm sure I recall producing Thai scripts in the past for fun and more easily, but I only seem now to be able to produce them by using the character palette, as the Thai option was not highlighted in the menu bar. But while in this forum, it is highlighted, and I can produce æääÓ¾ÐÑÑÕÃùÃÂ. Something has happened, although In the Safari menu, the Thai option is Windows and Dos only. I'm confused.

I have a Thai keyboard, but when I connect it, the drawer opens, as if it needs a driver with scripts.

Any ideas? The ibook has just had a new logic board fitted, but no re-formatting was done, but the bad one had been fitted a year ago, and I did have to reinput everything then. Perhaps there is something I still have to reset.

I also have problems in quotes for replying in this forum, but that's another matter. I once quoted a whole topic by mistake!!

Edited March 25, 2005 by RDN

[vuka]

I've sort of cracked it, I think. If I change the language order in system prefs and then restart, it will type in Thai and English as I choose, but the Thai is still not highlighted unless the screen permits typing at the time. If I go into a document or the webaddress bar, etc, voilà!

And the keyboard does not cause the drawer to come out.

Now to learn some Thai. And find out what Thai PattaChote is.

[Boon Mee]

Now to learn some Thai. And find out what Thai PattaChote is.

Believe Pattachote is the other option from Kedmanee you get with Windows XP and it designates what keyboard fonts you've got?

Not sure - perhaps RDN or someone with more extensive use of Thai fonts/keyboards could weigh in?

บุญมี

[vuka]

And I just see that the Thai script letters I inserted in my previous message have come back to my browser as a bunch of hieroglyphics which are definitely not Thai! I accuse a problem with translation between mac (me) and windows based systems (Thaivisa) of non standard Roman letters and some punctuation marks. I thought those problems had been abolished with current systems.

[buadhai]

The problem is the way the characters are encoded and the way browsers display them. You should be able to set the text encoding of your browser and see the Thai characters. Try setting it to "Unicode" or "Thai".

And, you are right. Mac's and PC's encode the characters differently.

Winows seems to use hard coding like this:

& #3610;& #3640;& #3597;& #3617;& #3637;

The Mac uses Unicode (double-byte characters) like this:

à 1 ? à ¸ ¡ à ¸?

(spaces added to prevent decoding)

The Windows encoding works no matter what text encoding the bowser is set for.

I think you'll get the best result if you set encoding for "Thai" both when you type and entry and when you view the page.

Edited March 25, 2005 by mgnewman

[RDN]

.... the Thai is still not highlighted unless the screen permits typing at the time. ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I noticed this a while ago - I think I posted a message about it in another thread. I usually click in an "edit" box in this forum web or in "Notepad" before attempting to change the input language.

PS. Have you read the topic about the "Microsoft Visual Keyboard". You can get it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=EN

I use it now in preference to the "on-screen keyboard" that comes with XP as it can be made large and so is much easier to read - especially the Thai fonts on the keys. This program was actually written for operating systems other than XP because they did not have an "on-screen keyboard". But the guys who wrote this program obviously learned about some of the failings of the 'on-screen keyboard" and made it better!

Believe Pattachote is the other option from Kedmanee you get with Windows XP and it designates what keyboard fonts you've got?

Not sure - perhaps RDN or someone with more extensive use of Thai fonts/keyboards could weigh in?

ºØ­ÁÕ

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I believe Kedmanee is the more popular keyboard and is the variety of hard keyboard I have.

Under "Regional and Language Options" / "Languages" / "Details", I have added the Kedmanee keyboard, but I think you can add both.

The problem is the way the characters are encoded and the way browsers display them. .....

I think you'll get the best result if you set encoding for "Thai" both when you type and entry and when you view the page.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The only problem I have with Firefox, is the encoding often changes back to Western, when I have set the default to Thai. Any help there would be gratefully received .

[Richard W]

And I just see that the Thai script letters I inserted in my previous message have come back to my browser as a bunch of hieroglyphics which are definitely not Thai!  I accuse a problem with translation between mac (me) and windows based systems (Thaivisa) of non standard Roman letters and some punctuation marks. I thought those problems had been abolished with current systems.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Strange, they looked like Latin-1 to me.

I switched the encoding to Thai, and it still looked like gibberish:

I can produce ๆไไำพะััีรรนรย.

, as though some one were just tapping keys from left to right along the second row and producing an arbitrary string of Thai characters.

The problem seems to be that your browser thinks it is reasonable to send the text you entered in the encoding of the page, so it sends 8-bit codes. At the receiving end, the server is probably expecting Latin-1, so that is how they are interpreted. Mishap - your message can then only be read if the Thaivisa page is switched to a Thai encoding.

With IE or Firefox on Windows XP, I just leave the encoding unchanged and type with the keyboard set to Thai or English as I desire, and it works fine. Cutting and pasting to here from other web pages in a Thai encoding also work fine. The same goes for Windows 2000 and IE, except I don't have the facility to type in Thai on that Windows 2000 system - I have to type the Thai in a special program and then cut and paste.

As you type the message into the editing box, it should be stored as 16-bit Unicode codes. I recommend that you try to type in Thai without changing the encoding of the web page - leave it as Latin-1/Western European.

Good luck!

[buadhai]

OK, let's do an experiment. I'll do three different posts in three different encodings:

Western (ISO Latin 1)

Unicode (UTF-8)

Thai (Windows, DOS)

This on a Mac running 10.3.8 using the current Safari web browser.

Here's what I'll type:

Let me know what you see and what encoding you're using.

[buadhai]

Western (ISO Latin 1)

???

Edited March 25, 2005 by mgnewman

[buadhai]

Unicode (UTF-8)

ไมค

[buadhai]

Thai (Windows, DOS)

äÁ¤

[buadhai]

Doesn't work too well, does it?

No matter what I do I can't display the Thai I entered with the coding set to Western. I can display the other two Thai posts if I change the encoding to be the same as the one in which I entered it.

Oddly, Thai input works just fine in MSN Messenger and on other web sites. For example, my GF has been communicating in Thai with Kasikorn bank using their web forms and hasn't had to change the encoding at all (from default).

Any ideas?

[RDN]

This is what I see when viewing using different character encoding methods as shown at the bottom of each column. I often see that people have encoded using UTF-8 which does not display correctly when I am viewing using any of the Thai character encodings.

I don't know what the differences are between the three Thai encoding methods I have available. If you want me to try some other tests, I can do it (but it's a bit time consuming ).

[buadhai]

I don't know what the differences are between the three Thai encoding methods I have available. If you want me to try some other tests, I can do it (but it's a bit time consuming ).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for taking the time to do what you did and thanks for your offer. I think you've consumed enough of your time.

Strange thing is, the only place we have trouble is with this forum. As I mentioned, every where else we use Thai script it seems to work OK (with the exception of some web-based e-mail).

[Andrew Mac]

I don't know what the differences are between the three Thai encoding methods I have available. If you want me to try some other tests, I can do it (but it's a bit time consuming ).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for taking the time to do what you did and thanks for your offer. I think you've consumed enough of your time.

Strange thing is, the only place we have trouble is with this forum. As I mentioned, every where else we use Thai script it seems to work OK (with the exception of some web-based e-mail).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm on a Mac system as well, and yes, this forum is not as straightforward as it could be. If you look at the HTML code you'll see that the page is set to <meta ... charset=iso-8859-1" />, rather than Thai, so I need to set Safari's encoding to "Thai (Windows, DOS)" to read any text *entered directly in Thai*. If I want to post Thai characters, the best way is to encode the page as Thai before typing your reply: if not, I can't guarantee that anyone -- even yourself -- will be able to read the post!

The reason I put the emphasis on text *entered directly in Thai* above is because that seems to be the default for Safari, whereas it appears that the Windows browser(s) most people use on this board (probably Internet Explorer?) input the text as XHTML Unicode Decimal Entities rather than text (so the page code stores the character kaw kai as "&#3585;" rather than "¡" ).

Personally, I'd rather the board was set to deliver pages in Thai encoding -- or better yet, Unicode, rather than Western, but really it's only a minor inconvenience. Anyone having display problems usually only needs to remember to manually change the encoding any time they want to read *some* of the Thai text -- that which people have entered as Thai characters -- or before they want to post anything in Thai.

By the way, if you're on Mac OS X, I'd really recommend you pop over to http://earthlingsoft.net/UnicodeChecker/index.html and download a program called "Unicode Checker". It's a wonderful little utility for finding out all sorts of information about unicode character sets, and can also do conversions between unicode text and HTML entities. It also adds an entry to the "Services" menu that can quickly do such conversions for you while you're in Safari.

So if you want, for example, you can type "ÇÑ´Õ¤ÃѺ " and have it converted to "

&#3626;&#3623;&#3633;&#3626;&#3604;&#3637;&#3588;&#3619;&#3633;&#3610; ", which are the equivalent HTML entities.

I hope this makes some kind of sense, and is of some help to others using Macs.

Edited March 25, 2005 by Andrew Mac

[Andrew Mac]

Actually, I'm sorry, but I just noticed that (in my browser at least) the board mangled the text in my last message. When I typed สวัสดีครับ ( with that text this time converted to HTML character entities using the Unicode Checker service) it came out missing saw seua ... that is, as ÇÑ´Õ¤ÃѺ instead.

Oh well, that's computers for you! And I'm afraid I don't have time to experiment further to find out what's going on! The pages on this board are delivered in XHTML, though, and if I remember correctly the default encoding for XHTML is one of the Unicode version (UTF-8, perhaps?). So I guess the issue is something to do with all the possible confusion between Western, Thai and Unicode character sets ... not much fun, really!

At least I have Unicode Checker to fall back on!

:-)

Edited March 25, 2005 by Andrew Mac

[Jockstar]

Ok. Let me try what i said to you before. I dont know Thai. So what ver i print will probably not make sense. But its just a test, Ok.

English

Hello!

Thai

หฟไฟกำำ าพีย

I think thats worked. this was done by just clicking on the EN on the bar at the bottom and changing to Thai.

[Andrew Mac]

Ok. Let me try what i said to you before. I dont know Thai. So what ver i print will probably not make sense. But its just a test, Ok.

English

Hello!

Thai

Ë¿ä¿¡ÓÓ Ò¾ÕÂ

I think thats worked.  this was done by just clicking on the EN on the bar at the bottom and changing to Thai.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Jockstar ... yes ... your method did work ... but you probably need to remember that not everyone uses Windows, which is what your procedure refers to. I'm afraid the issue that a few of us have been discussing in this thread is that with other operating systems (in our case, Macs) this forum isn't behaving quite the way it should.

As a matter of fact, we have a very similar easy way to change the script we type in, but in our case we choose a menu item at the top of the screen rather than clicking at the bottom. There are some other minor differences, but essentially we end up doing the same kind of thing as the people using Windows.

However, what is happening to Mac users (and maybe some others) while using this forum is that we're getting some rather curious behaviour that we don't normally run into on other forums, and unfortunately that unexpected behaviour is making things a bit more complicated for us than it should be. We're not likely to be anything other than a relatively small minority of forum members, however ... and there are workarounds, one of which I mentioned above ... but it is a little confusing, and maybe frustrating for some of us.

I really do wish that fixing the problem was just a matter of changing to Thai -- which is all that we normally need to do, just the same as Windows users -- but sadly for us there is something complicating what should be the simple kind of process you describe.

Personally, I think it's a combination of different browsers inputting characters using alternatives methods, as I tried to suggest in an earlier post, and some further subtle complications related to the pages delivered back from the ThaiVisa web server. But someone with greater technical understanding of the issues involved may be able to correct me on that, and hopefully suggest an easy solution.

Anyway, I'm sorry if we seem to be giving the impression that we're stupid or something, but really ... we're not! :-)

Edited March 25, 2005 by Andrew Mac

[Andrew Mac]

Now to learn some Thai. And find out what Thai PattaChote is.

Believe Pattachote is the other option from Kedmanee you get with Windows XP and it designates what keyboard fonts you've got?

Not sure - perhaps RDN or someone with more extensive use of Thai fonts/keyboards could weigh in?

ºØ­ÁÕ

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Pattachote is actually a different mapping of Thai characters to keys on the keyboard. The characters are all the same, but their position on the keyboard is different. It's the same kind of thing as the difference between our own standard "QWERTY" keyboard, and that alternative "Dvorak" keyboard some of you might have heard about.

My understanding is that a Thai government official invented Pattachote many years ago. After studying the relative frequency of Thai characters being used, he then created a new keyboard layout that was more logical, theoretically much quicker to use, and which put frequently-used characters in easy-to-reach places.

I believe that Pattachote was, at least for a while, supposed to be the official keyboard used by Thai government worker (and it may even still be), but it never really caught on, and everyone just sticks to the familiar old Ketmanee layout.

Apologies in advance if that's not quite right, but please: if anyone knows a different story, I'd love to know! :-)

[Richard W]

I don't know what the differences are between the three Thai encoding methods I have available. If you want me to try some other tests, I can do it (but it's a bit time consuming ).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

TIS-620 does not have a character for 0xA0, which is non-breaking space in ISO-8859-11. Windows-874 has different mappings for 0x80 to 0x9F, including puctuation; ISO-8859-11 assigns these to C1 control characters, and MacThai uses them for kerning tone marks, maitaikhu and superscript vowels. Windows-874 and ISO-8859-11 are superscripts of TIS-620; MacThai conflicts for some of the Thai characters used only rarely, such as yamakkan, angkhankhu and khomut.

One problem with switching to the Thai encoding is that accented vowels, which Meadish Sweetball often uses to show the tone, will then become Thai characters!

It may be that Safari can't cope. Have you tried Firefox? Firefox works fine with this site under Windows XP. I've a feeling that the text sent via forms is not a well-defined area under the standards.

[RDN]

Actually, I'm sorry, but I just noticed that (in my browser at least) the board mangled the text in my last message. When I typed ÇÑ´Õ¤ÃѺ ( with that text this time converted to HTML character entities using the Unicode Checker service) it came out missing saw seua ... that is, as ÇÑ´Õ¤ÃѺ instead.

Oh well, that's computers for you!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Very interesting posts Andrew. You never know, with all these tests that we are doing, we may be able to persuade the powers that be to change something to make this forum work better, or at least the same as most other forums.

I'd like to comment on two of your posts.

Firstly, your first post about the way the page code stores the character kaw kai. When I first read this in the "Notification email" from Thaivisa I didn't understand your point, because I could see two kaw kai Thai characters. So I went to Thaivisa in my Firefox browser and had a look, and I saw the ampersand, hash and number and then a kaw kai character! On the left is a screen shot from outlook express, and on the right is the forum page in Firefox with Thai Windows-874 encoding:

Strange huh?

Secondly, you are not the only one to lose the saw seua at the beginning of a Thai phrase. I think there's more to this than meets the eye!

Edit: Here's the link to the other occurrence of a missing saw seua: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?sh...ndpost&p=300475

Edited March 25, 2005 by RDN

[RDN]

TIS-620 does not have a character for 0xA0, which is non-breaking space in ISO-8859-11.  Windows-874 has different mappings for 0x80 to 0x9F, including punctuation; ISO-8859-11 assigns these to  C1  control characters, and MacThai  uses them for kerning tone marks, maitaikhu and superscript vowels.  Windows-874 and ISO-8859-11 are superscripts of TIS-620; MacThai conflicts for some of the Thai characters used only rarely, such as yamakkan, angkhankhu and khomut.

One problem with switching to the Thai encoding is that accented vowels, which Meadish Sweetball often uses to show the tone, will then become Thai characters!

It may be that Safari can't cope.  Have you tried Firefox?  Firefox works fine with this site under Windows XP.  I've a feeling that the text sent via forms is not a well-defined area under the standards.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for those details, Richard. I'm having a bit of trouble with Firefox's encoding - I can't seem to make it stay with Thai ISO 8859-11. It kept changing back to Western 5889-1 (I think that was the one) so I've been a bit drastic and removed English from Tools / Options / General / Languages and also I have set Tools / View / Encoding / Auto Detect to "OFF".

If you use Firefox and don't have this problem, can you say what settings you have for languages, encoding, etc?

[Richard W]

Thanks for those details, Richard. I'm having a bit of trouble with Firefox's encoding - I can't seem to make it stay with Thai ISO 8859-11. It kept changing back to Western 5889-1 (I think that was the one) so I've been a bit drastic  and removed English from Tools / Options / General / Languages and also I have set  Tools / View / Encoding / Auto Detect to "OFF".

The pages from this site are explicitly marked as being in the iso-8859-1 encoding! No 'auto-detection' is required!

If you use Firefox and don't have this problem, can you say what settings you have for languages, encoding, etc?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One reason I've had no problems may be that I am using Windows XP. I have upgraded to Service Pack 2 (and am none to pleased to discover that IE now regards a lot of javascript as unsafe.)

Windows XP Settings:

Regional options: English (United Kingdom)

Location: United Kingdom

Language Settings:

Default: English (United-Kingdom) - United States - International

Other language/keyboard options set up:

English (United States) - US keyboard

Thai - Thai Kedmanee (non-ShiftLock)

Catalan - KhmerOS - Khmer Unicode Keyboard

Switch between input languages: Left Alt + Shift

Advanced Text Services: Neither extended nor switched off.

Something makes Notepad think that the ANSI encoding includes TIS-620!

Firefox 1.0 settings

Tools/Options/General/Languages/Languages: Empty

Tools/Options/General/Languages/Default character encoding: ISO-8859-1 (Western)

View/Character encoding - no special setting - I usually just let it drift, so it's currently showing ISO-8859-1. When I was viewing Yahoo groups pages, I set it to UTF-8, and it stayed there.

Which version of Firefox are you using?

I have had form problems - see Thai-Language Firefox Issues, and I'm not sure how they are consistent with the behaviour seen on ThaiVisa.com. The only problem I've had here iwth Firefox has been with fonts for Thai, which is a relatively minor issue. As a solution, I seem to have made Tahoma the default font for nearly everything!

Edited March 25, 2005 by Richard W

[buadhai]

If you use Firefox and don't have this problem, can you say what settings you have for languages, encoding, etc?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I tried the Mac version of Firefox and it was worse. I couldn't get it to display the Thai text in this thread no matter what encoding I set.

[RDN]

The pages from this site are explicitly marked as being in the iso-8859-1 encoding!  No 'auto-detection' is required!

Yes, but I thought turning off auto-detect might stop it changing its encoding method. I had hoped it would stick to the method I specify in View / Character Encoding

If you use Firefox and don't have this problem, can you say what settings you have for languages, encoding, etc?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

One reason I've had no problems may be that I am using Windows XP. I have upgraded to Service Pack 2 (and am none to pleased to discover that IE now regards a lot of javascript as unsafe.)

Me too - WinXP SP2

Windows XP Settings:

Regional options:  English (United Kingdom)

Location: United Kingdom

Language Settings:

Default: English (United-Kingdom) - United States - International

Other language/keyboard options set up:

English (United States) - US keyboard

Thai - Thai Kedmanee (non-ShiftLock)

Catalan - KhmerOS - Khmer Unicode Keyboard

Switch between input languages: Left Alt + Shift

Advanced Text Services: Neither extended nor switched off.

Something makes Notepad think that the ANSI encoding includes TIS-620!

Firefox 1.0 settings

Tools/Options/General/Languages/Languages: Empty

Tools/Options/General/Languages/Default character encoding: ISO-8859-1 (Western)

View/Character encoding - no special setting - I usually just let it drift, so it's currently showing ISO-8859-1.  When I was viewing Yahoo groups pages, I set it to UTF-8, and it stayed there.

OK, I'll check all my settings against yours and see what happens when I change them. This'll probably take some time, so I doubt I'll post again tonight (er... this morning)

Which version of Firefox are you using?

Two minutes ago - literally - I upgraded my Firefox to 1.0.2 - I've been using 1.0.1 for a long time.

I have had form problems - see Thai-Language Firefox Issues, and I'm not sure how they are consistent with the behaviour seen on ThaiVisa.com.  The only problem I've had here with Firefox has been with fonts for Thai, which is a relatively minor issue.  As a solution, I seem to have made Tahoma the default font for nearly everything!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK, I'll have a long play and report back tomorrow. Cheers!

[buadhai]

At least I have Unicode Checker to fall back on!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks Andrew, great little utility. I love the way it gives the name of the Thai character as well. Very cool.