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How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website Web Browsers
First you shall need to grab this a useful little freeware by earthlingsoft, UnicodeChecker 1.6. This little Cocoa application will give your Services menu a service menu called Unicode. Now, this is how it works...

First, just type as you would do using whatever input method editors you prefer, i.e.:

繁體中文、简体中文、にほんご、한국말。

Next, select the whole text, and now go to the new Unicode service in the Services menu under the Application menu (so if you are in Safari, it will be Safari -> Services -> Unicdoe) and select the Unicode -> HTML Entities selection. Voila, UnicodeChecker will open and quickly do the conversion and paste it back for you:
繁體中文、简体中
文、にほんご、한
국말。
Don't worry about what it looks like now (extra line breaks were added above to make it more readable here); it will appear as correctly in your blog or forum. I do hope future versions of Safari will be able, like MS Internet Explorer 6, to do this automatically, but for now, this works just fine (at least for me). P.S. This method will work with any Unicode characters, not just CJK.

Note: A copy of this hint, with an additional shot of UnicodeChecker in action, is also available on my website.
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How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website | 8 comments | Create New Account
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Another solution
Authored by: oeyvind on Aug 04, '04 11:14:17AM

is to use a browser like Firefox that allow direct entry



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Another solution
Authored by: oeyvind on Aug 04, '04 11:18:33AM

forgot to add that the Firefox tip was from Wataru of MacNN forum.



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How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website
Authored by: Spartacus on Aug 04, '04 01:10:36PM

If you actually use this tip, don't forget to also send an e-mail to the site's owner to ask them to switch it to Unicode. A site where you are likely to enter non Latin characters should definitely not be Latin-based.



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How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website
Authored by: lagroue on Aug 04, '04 02:48:00PM

MySQL unicode support is so crappy...
A site where you are likely to enter non Latin characters should definitely not be designed by Latin-based people. (pun doesn't work that well, never mind)



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How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website
Authored by: adriaant on Aug 04, '04 03:16:07PM

You shall preach the gospel of UTF8



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The gospel of UTF-8
Authored by: Spartacus on Aug 04, '04 03:44:47PM

I do:

http://ölbaum.ch/unicode/ (or http://ithink.ch/unicode/ for some/most browsers)


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Log Out First
Authored by: bedouin on Aug 05, '04 06:13:31AM

Before Unicode appears in the services menu you'll need to logout and log back in; make sure UniCodeChecker was placed in your Applications folder.



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How to enter non-Latin text on a latin-based website
Authored by: Makosuke on Aug 05, '04 04:07:00PM

This is a good tip -- I've been using a different application that provides a similar unicode-->HTML entity conversion service for years.

Unfortunately, you have to be careful; some scripts or software know about HTML entities and try to display the text exactly as the user entered (usually using an entity for the & character), which results in the unicode string appearing as raw code instead of the intended character.

For example, in this comment system if you choose "Plain Old Text" instead of "HTML Formatted", and type &#12354, you'll get exactly that text (it converts the & to an HTML entity) instead of あ. If the software is also smart enough to do the conversion itself, you can just type unicode straight into it, but some aren't, making it essentially impossible to enter non-Latin text.

Whether this is by design or an incorrect assumption about what people want to be typing, the result is the same, so you might want to test to make sure you're not typing gobldygook into a forum or whatever before you do a large post.



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