Sending email using Foreign Language Keyboards
Macintosh and Windows
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Sending email using Foreign Language Keyboards Macintosh and Windows |
These instructions are general and should work for any language that the operating system provides for. This includes, but is not limited to Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, and Korean. These instructions are, however, incomplete and not meant to be comprehensive.
If you have further questions, please post to the Computing Questions conference in FirstClass.
FirstClass client / web version
FirstClass does not yet support Unicode characters so its ability to handle foreign language keyboards is extremely limited.
FirstClass to FirstClass and "the Outside":
In FirstClass you can write an email using an foreign language keyboard and send the message to someone using FirstClass on the same platform as you. They should be able to read the message without selecting the text and applying a font. They will not be able to read the email on a different platform. So emails written in FirstClass on Macs can only be read in FirstClass on Macs. Emails written in FirstClass on PCs can only be read in FirstClass on PCs.
This also applies to chats in FirstClass.
FirstClass is not a reliable way to send email off-campus using an foreign language keyboard either. See the section for HTML mail email accounts below.
"Outside mail" to FirstClass:
If you receive a text email in FirstClass it may be possible to read the message. If the characters are gibberish when you open the message, select all of the text and then apply an appropriate font.
Some emails, sent by HTML mail email accounts, will come with an attach0.html file. You can open this attachment in a browser to view the email. Use IE 6 or higher in Windows or Safari in Mac OS X. Other browsers may also work. If the email does not immediately appear readable, from the View menu of your browser, choose an appropriate encoding.
If neither of these solutions works, ask the sender to write the message using a word processor and to send it as an attachment. See the instructions for word processing above.
HTML mail email accounts (including Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail)
If you need to send or receive email and FirstClass is not working, the best solution is to use an HTML mail email account. Although we have tested mainly Hotmail here, any HTML mail account would work. If you are sending messages, the receiver will need an HTML mail email account as well.
You can set up an account by going to http://www.hotmail.com or http://mail.yahoo.com