Errors When Printing Thai

[kunnatee]

Hi.

I found a thread about this topic a few months ago when I looked for it and it didn't have any answer yet.

I can't find the thread anymore so I'm starting a new one.

I'm using Windows 7 and an HP deskjet F380 printer.

I have no problem at all typing in Thai.

However, when I print a document in Thai, the hanging vowels and markers are often deplaced to the right, with a dotted circle (ุ)

usually overlapping the characters over/under which they should be instead.

Or they may appear over/under a similar circle.

With windows 2000/XP and the same printer, there was no problem.

The errors appear with both Word 2000 and 2007.

The driver for the printer is the last version.

I've looked quite a bit, so it's not a basic question of installing the right fonts or choosing the right language parameters.

I've found an update for this problem on XP but not on Windows 7.

However, I've seen computers with Windows 7 printing without errors, so there's no incompatibility.

According to a page I found, there should be no problem printing in Thai with Word 2007, so the problem seems to come Windows.

Can anyone help?

Thank you in advance.

[AyG]

The problem (I'm afraid) is with your typing. If you don't type the tone marks and above vowels in the correct sequence your computer will automatically insert a "null" character (the dotted circle) in places where you've typed what it interprets as a tone mark or above vowel without a corresponding consonant. You just need to brush up on the correct sequence for typing in Thai.

For some reason, on screen display is far more forgiving of typing sequence errors than printing.

[kunnatee]

So my typing went wrong when I installed Windows 7?

Thank you for your answer, but I mentioned that "I have no problem at all typing in Thai." to avoid, well... you can guess.

Your screen must be very well-brought-up if its display is far more forgiving of typing sequence errors than printing.

[richsilver]

Try copying your text to the clipboard then pasting it into another application and then print from the new application. Sometimes Notepad will work or perhaps Wordpad. I always have success with SnagIt, but you may not have that app.

Edited May 16, 2012 by richsilver

[kunnatee]

Unfortunately, I also need the texts to be formated. So Notepad won't do.

Other people who have the same problem say that it's apparently printer related because they can print on some machines but not others.

But I still don't know if the error comes from a windows incompatibility or from the driver for the printer.

Neither company provides any fix or update concerning this problem on Windows 7.

[richsilver]

Unfortunately, I also need the texts to be formated. So Notepad won't do.

Other people who have the same problem say that it's apparently printer related because they can print on some machines but not others.

But I still don't know if the error comes from a windows incompatibility or from the driver for the printer.

Neither company provides any fix or update concerning this problem on Windows 7.

Did you try WordPad?

[kunnatee]

Thank you and sorry for the late answer, but it used to work on Word and I want to make it work again.

I don't like getting around problems that have solutions by using something different. I want to understand what was not working.

An I actually do need to use Word rather than WordPad.

When there's a problem, I like to fix it rather than sweep it under the carpet.

But this one issue, although being mentionned by several people, seems to have answers nowhere on the internet.

I don't have much time to do so, but I imagine that I should visit the guy whom I bought the computer from as he probably knows the answer. My schedule doesn't really help.

[Richard W]

Actually, it might help if examples of misprinted strings were provided. Adding a conversion to hex (alt/X) would quiet suspicions that you had extraneous characters in the strings.

I have apparently minor problems with Word XP (i.e. Word 2002) SP3 on 64-bit Windows 7, at least, for Thai. They mostly manifest themselves when typing in Word. At first, some of the combining characters displayed very badly, but the problem seems to have gone away. It's just possible that the improvement is related to the installation of Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System, though that is supposed to be for handling new file formats.

I have display problems when I choose to display decimal points for spaces. This is related to cursor placement for sara am - the cursor is placed after nikkahit component when it should be placed after the sara aa component. When I display spaces as decimal points, the sara aa component of a sara am can disappear. The cursor misplacement problem also seems to affect line-wrapping, which may be more serious - it has shown up in a printing test. No other problems showed up for printing Thai - done on a Deskjet 3325.

I also have typing problems for Pali - I can't type sara i nikkhahit or sara u nikkhahit in Word 2002. The latter can be typed in Notepad, and cut and pasted to Word, but for the former I need some other editor, such as OpenOffice.

I have limited practice with handling Word problems on Windows 7 - I use a later version of Word on Windows XP for work and normally use LibreOffice on Ubuntu at home.