Writing in the World’s Languages with PlanMaker
This document describes how to use PlanMaker to write in the world’s languages.
This document is work in progress, so if you have additional information or corrections, please send your input to info@softmaker.de.
Note: PlanMaker can be used for creating documents in almost any language. However, the following languages are currently not supported:
l	Chinese, Japanese, Korean (PlanMaker doesn’t support two-byte characters)
l	Hebrew, Arabic (PlanMaker doesn’t support right-to-left writing systems)
Introduction
While typing text in English and most Western European languages is possible on any computer, using languages with accented characters (e.g. Central European languages) might require some preparations. This document will lead you through the necessary steps. It is divided into the following sections:
1.	Where to find suitable fonts
2.	Where to get a suitable keyboard mapping
3.	How to type text in your native language
1. Where to find suitable fonts
Fonts can contain just one font encoding (i.e. just one character set) or several encodings at once (for example Western European, Central European, and Turkish). So, if you want to type text in Turkish, you have to use a font that contains a Turkish font encoding. 
Of course, not all fonts come with all kinds of encodings. But, depending on your operating system, there might be some fonts that you can most certainly use:
Windows and Windows CE fonts
Users of Windows as well as Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs can use the so called core fonts coming with your operating system (e.g. Tahoma, Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New). These usually do contain all accented characters for writing in Western and Central European languages, Baltic languages, Turkish, Greek, Cyrillic, and several more.
To make things a bit confusing, there are different versions of these core fonts floating around. Firstly, Microsoft has added new characters to these fonts from Windows version to Windows version. Secondly, some Microsoft applications install “extended” versions of Arial and Tahoma, for example, with more character sets built-in.
Therefore, if you exchange documents with a user that has a more limited version of the core fonts installed, some special characters might not be displayed correctly on his/her machine. Additionally, the core fonts on most Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs have a smaller character set in general.
Bottom line: You should first test document exchange before relying on non-standard characters to transfer between computers.
You can easily examine which characters a certain font contains. Windows ships with a program called “Character Map” (charmap.exe) that displays the character sets of any installed font. A similar feature is available on the most modern Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs as well: Start Pocket Excel or Pocket Word and go to the Tools menu to display and insert characters.
Linux fonts
Since there are so many different distributions of Linux available, you can’t tell which fonts in distribution “X” come with multiple encodings. You should either simply try it out or use tools like xfontsel to find out which fonts provide the encodings you need.
Tip: The SoftMaker fonts named Roman-PS, Courier-PS, and Sans-PS (included in PlanMaker) do include many encodings.
Other fonts
Other fonts that you acquired somewhere or that got installed by some application often just contain the characters necessary to display Western European languages. If you type an accented character with one of these fonts, but your computer just displays a blank character or square, then this font is missing the character. Replace it by a font that has the font encoding you need for your language. Suitable fonts are available at almost any font vendor. (Also check out SoftMaker’s MegaFont XXL font library at www.softmaker.com. It contains many “XXL fonts” with numerous encodings).
2. Where to get a suitable keyboard mapping
While you could you use a tool like a character map to insert accented characters into your documents, getting a suitable keyboard mapping makes things a lot easier. Some operating systems have support for non-English keyboard mappings already built in, some require third party software:
Keyboard mappings in Windows
All versions of desktop Windows since Windows 95 have support for many languages already built-in. This support is either already active (e.g. an Italian copy of Windows automatically installs an Italian keyboard mapping and fonts with Italian characters) or can be installed as an optional component.
To add additional languages to Windows:
1.	Go to your PC’s Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel).
2.	Select Regional Settings (depending on your version of Windows, this might also be titled “Regional and language settings”, or “Country settings”, or something similar).
3.	When you double-click on this symbol, a dialog consisting of multiple pages will appear. On one of the pages, you will find an option for adding additional regional keyboards. Add the additional keyboards that you would like to use.
From now on, you will be able to type text in the language(s) you installed.
Keyboard mappings on Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs
Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs support, out of the box, just one keyboard mapping: the one of the country where the device was sold (or English, if Microsoft did not localize for your country). There is no official Microsoft way to add additional keyboard mappings to your operating system.
If no keyboard mapping is available for your language, you have to buy a third-party product that provides it. Here is a list of some products that we have found:
Language Extender (supporting many different languages):
l	www.penreader.com/PocketPC/Language_Extender.html (for Pocket PCs)
l	www.penreader.com/WinCE/Language_Extender.html (for Handheld PCs)

ArtSKey (supporting many different languages):
l	www.artsoft.ru/eng/ppcprod.htm (for Pocket PCs)
l	www.artsoft.ru/eng/hpcprod.htm (for Handheld PCs)
(Note: The version we tested refused to work with non-English devices; it wouldn't install e.g. on a German device. To be sure that your machine is supported, you should try the trial version first).

Pocket PC Thai (supporting Thai only):
l	www.pocketpcthai.net/product.php
l	Some other tools can be found on www.eitcenter.com/pocketpc/dl_thai.htm

Please note that we neither warrant for the performance of these products nor explicitly recommend them. They are just listed to save you the time finding them yourself. You should check out if they suit your needs on your own before you consider purchasing them.
Keyboard mappings in Linux
Most Linux distributions support a very large variety of non-English keyboards. You can either choose the keyboard layout when you install Linux, or change it later (using the control center of the Window Manager you have installed). Refer to the documentation included with your Linux distribution for further details.
3. How to type text in your native language
To finally type text in your native language with PlanMaker, you have to do two things:
1.	Activate a keyboard mapping suitable for your language (see section 2).
2.	Set PlanMaker’s default font encoding to the language you want to use:
PlanMaker has an option that lets you choose the default font encoding for fonts containing multiple encodings. To change it, call up Extras/Preferences, switch to the General tab, and select the desired default font encoding.
By default, default font encoding is set to “Western” (ISO 8859-1/15). When you select a font with multiple encodings now, the Western encoding is used.
If you set the default font encoding to “Central Europe” (ISO 8859-2) and select a font with multiple encodings, the “Central European” encoding is used (if it exists).