Scenario:
ClarisWorks 2.1 on Thai system 7.1 (TH1-7.1):
- using US keyboard
- using US ClarisWorks and US dictionary
- his system allows typing Thai characters
Issue:
- performing spell check on US text with NO Thai characters: spell check window appears with STRANGE characters (such as %$#) and Thai characters....when selecting "Skip", it crashes; when selecting "Cancel", exits.
- in menus, there are Thai characters, also in splash screen
more detail:
- this occurs regardless of font used
- also regardless of which system file originated from
- reinstalling dictionary/application does not help
- this does NOT happen on other US 7.1 systems
Why this occurs:
There is a bug in the Thai system's FindWord code, that the speller uses to find words. For the Thai version of ClarisWorks 1.0, completed just recently, the engineers had to write their own FindWord procedure to get around the bug.
The Thai characters that you are seeing in the menus and splash screen are high ascii characters that have a different representation in a Thai font than they do in a US (Roman) font. The font of a menu or dialog item in ClarisWorks running on a Thai system is not Chicago, but some Thai font that looks like Chicago. Similarly, items in the splash screen are not displayed in Geneva or Helvetica, but some Thai font. All high ascii characters, such as (É ª š) etc. will be displayed differently. Also, these high ascii characters can be part of a two-byte character and that's when things really look bad.
Solution:
Use a US system.
Most of our applications have to be reengineered to work on two-byte systems such as Thai, Japanese, Korean, Chinese etc. We don't certify any of our US or localized applications as compatible with such systems. ClarisWorks 2.0 TH will be released soon, so if the guy wants full functionality from a ClarisWorks application on a Thai system, he's going to have to get this version.