Scrambled Thai Text

[Ting Tong Man]

Is there a way to convert Thai that has been scrambled into numbers (example: สวัสดี ค่ะ) back into readable Thai?

That's weird, it unscrambled when I posted it.

Before I submitted the message it consisted of &, #, and numbers. But after I submitted it, it converted back into Thai. I was able to read it by posting it, previewing, copying and then pasting into a new document. Is there an easier way?

Edited April 1, 2005 by Ting Tong Man

[meadish_sweetball]

Is there a way to convert Thai that has been scrambled into numbers (example: สวัสดี ค่ะ) back into readable Thai?

That's weird, it unscrambled when I posted it.

Before I submitted the message it consisted of &, #, and numbers.  But after I submitted it, it converted back into Thai.  I was able to read it by posting it, previewing, copying and then pasting into a new document.  Is there an easier way?

There may be even easier ways, but I usually copy and paste the scrambled Thai text into an MS Word document, select all the text and then use the Font drop down menu in the tool bar to change the font to DB Thai Text or some other Thai font. To find Thai fonts, look it up on Google with the key words: "thai fonts" "free" .

Cheers,

Meadish

[Richard W]

Is there a way to convert Thai that has been scrambled into numbers (example: สวัสดี ค่ะ) back into readable Thai?

That's weird, it unscrambled when I posted it.

Before I submitted the message it consisted of &, #, and numbers.  But after I submitted it, it converted back into Thai.  I was able to read it by posting it, previewing, copying and then pasting into a new document.  Is there an easier way?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There may be even easier ways, but I usually copy and paste the scrambled Thai text into an MS Word document, select all the text and then use the Font drop down menu in the tool bar to change the font to DB Thai Text or some other Thai font. To find Thai fonts, look it up on Google with the key words: "thai fonts" "free" .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

These are two different problems. In Ting Tong Man's case, he had what are called 'character entities' in HTML. He probably has found the easiest way of recovering such scrambling. A more public-spirited way would be to paste them to a text file, saving it with a .htm extension, and then viewing the file with an Internet browser, rather than getting the Thai Visa server to send the unchanged string back to him. However, his way is probably easier.

(The numbers enclosed in the & # ... ; were the Unicode codepoint numbers of the characters, in hex if they started with an x and in decimal if they started with a (decimal) digit.)

Meadish's solution is for when Thai text encoded as TIS-620 (Windows-874, Latin-11, MacThai etc.) has lost the encoding tag. In this case, an alternative solution, probably superior for those of us with with Windows NT/2000/XP, is to create a text file, with extension .htm, having an initial line

<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=Windows-874">

and the text following. Then view the file with an Internet browser, and the Thai will appear, and can be cut and pasted as 'normal' (i.e. Unicode encoded) text. You may occasionally have to switch the encodings, for example if the text has come from a Mac.

You can lift the bulk of that initial line from the source of most HTML pages, e.g. Thai Visa, an just change the charset. Or don't bother with it at all, and use the view, encoding (or similar) browser command to change the interpretation fo the characters.

Note that Meadish's approach requires the use of an 8-bit font, like DB Thai, not a Unicode font (e.g. those whose font file names end in UPC), and that the text is liable to cut and paste as accented Roman. (I'm not sure what would happen with StarOffice if one tried a similar trick.)

Edited April 1, 2005 by Richard W