International characters

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 18:05, 13 February 2007 by Tanstaafl (talk | contribs) (added link to quick locale switcher extension)
Jump to navigationJump to search
This article was written for Thunderbird but also applies to Mozilla Suite / SeaMonkey (though some menu sequences may differ).

This article describes how to view and type in languages other than your system's default language.

Viewing international characters

To view international characters, you do not normally need to do anything special in Thunderbird. Your operating system must have fonts for the languages that you want to view. You might have to download and install fonts in your operating system. Some downloads include tools for typing other languages, but to view other languages you only need the fonts.

Badly-formed e-mails

Some e-mails are badly formed. This can happen if the program that sends the e-mail has a bug or is badly written.

If you see the wrong characters in an e-mail, then you might be able to fix it by choosing View – Character Encoding. You will have to find the right character encoding by trial and error.

If you receive many e-mails that are badly formed in this way, you can use a folder to fix the character encoding. Make a folder and choose Edit – Folder Properties. Set the default character encoding for the folder and check the box "Apply default...". Now you can fix messages by moving them into this folder.

To print messages that are badly formed in this way, you must use the folder method.

Note:  If you have problems with character encodings, choose Tools – Options – Display – Fonts. Ensure that the checkboxes there are not checked. (If they are checked, then they force Thunderbird to use the wrong character encoding for some messages.)

Typing international characters

To type international characters, you normally use your operating system to change your keyboard mapping for the language that you want to type. For languages that do not easily map to your keyboard, (for example, Japanese on an English keyboard) you can use an input method editor (IME). If your operating system does not provide these things, you can usually download and install them.

The abcTajpu and ZombieKeys extensions make it easy to type accented letters or other international characters. You could also use the Windows character map (it's in "Accessories -> System Tools" if you use Windows XP) or Thunderbird's "Insert -> Characters and Symbols" menu command.

If you want to use a right-to-left language such as Hebrew or Arabic install the BiDi extension.

Thunderbird's user interface

The localization project page has links to localization efforts (other languages) that are not listed in the Thunderbird download page

See also