Thai is a syllabic alphabet much like those of India. It consists of consonants with vowel signs. Unlike the scripts of India, the consonant symbol used depends on the tone assigned to the syllable. For more information on the script, see the following pages.
In order to integrate foreign scripts into your computer, you must set up "keyboard" utilities in your operating system. Keyboards will allow you to switch between typing English and other languages in word processors and Web tools. This process will also make sure the correct fonts are installed are availble for Windows or Macintosh.
As of Spring 2005, the international word processor Global Writer is available in the Student Computing Labs. This allows users to easily switch keyboards, including phonetic keyboards which mimic a QWERTY keyboard.
CLC Student Computing Labs: To open Global Writer, go to the Start » Internatinal Language Support » Unitype Global Writer.
Global Writer is available from Unitype for personal purchace.
Microsoft provides a variety of free keyboard utlities, but they must be installed from the disk, then activated from the Regional Control Panel.
Student Computing Labs - The utilities are installed in the University Park Student Computing Labs, but students must install the utlities by going to the Start menu then International Language Support » Microsoft » Office Microsoft Office Asian Character Input Support.
Home Computers - Several Asian and Middle Eastern keyboards are available in Windows, but you may have to install it from the Windows System disk because it is a complex script. After that you can activate the keyboards from the Regional Control Panel.
See Windows East Asian Keyboards for detailed instructions with screen captures.
Once the keyboards have been installed, they must be activated in the Regional Control Panel. Read the summary instructions below or go to Windows East Asian Keyboards for detailed instructions with screen captures.
Two Thai keyboards are available from Apple, but you may have to install it from the Macintosh System disk because it is a complex script.
See the Macintosh Keyboard Instructions for details on how to activate the keyboard.
Apple does not provide any Thai utilities, but third-party software may be available.
If you have your browser configured correctly, the Web sites above should display the correct characters. If you have difficulties, see list below for font and browser configuration instructions.
welcome.to/macinthai (Mac Thai Club)
Additional freeware fonts can be downloaded from from the sites below. Note that not all these fonts may work on System 9 for Macintosh, but will work in Windows and OS X .
See also
Browsers which fully support Unicode are the strongly recommended. Click link in list to view configuration instructions. You will be asked to match a script with a font.
If you see Roman character gibberish instead of Thai (such as at Courier Thai Mono download) you will need to manually switch from Western encoding view to the Thai encoding under the View menu of your browser.
These are the codes which allow browsers and screen readers to process data as the appropriate language. All letters in codes are lower case.
Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to U.S. settings and not display the text properly.
To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file, then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8 as the encoding.
Generic Encoding Template
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=??? ">
...
<head>Declare Unicode
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>
The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag if you are using XHTML
Declare Unicode in XHTML
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>
If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also, older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly without the "utf-8" declaration.
Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the language of a page. These are meta data tags which indicate the page of a language, not devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to insert it.
One option is to use FrontPage, Netscape/Mozilla Composer or Dreamweaver and change the keyboard to the correct script. Make sure you specify the encoding in the Web page header.
Another option is to compose the basic text in an international or foreign languags text editor or word processor and export the content as an HTML or text file with the appropriate encoding. This file could be opened in another HTML editor such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver an edited for formatting.
Thai numeric Unicode entity codes can be used for small pieces of text when other methods to not work.
NOTE: Free downloads not tested
