Family Historian User Group

Hi, is it possible in FH to enter/display international characters, such as the letter 'O' with double accent marks above it?

If so, how, and what versions of FH support this?

ID:4145

I believe you can store the more common characters using the alt key method to enter the characters, but FH does not currently support UniCode

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There was a recent thread on this topic: Accented charaters

This is the single most disappointing thing about Family Historian - it's the best piece of desktop family history software out there and yet it still cannot support any basic deviation from English. I need Central European characters, for instance. If I paste such a character into FH, it does not recognise it and converts it into a wardrobe-shaped box. Similarly, if I import a Gedcom from an inferior family history programme which includes bona fide Central European characters, Family Historian corrupts and mangles it.

It's the one thing which makes me want to change programmes; surely, too, it's limiting for FH in terms of an international audience.

I assume it's not going to be fixed in v5 but would be delighted to learn otherwise.  

To get FH to support a language like Czech correctly, you need to do the following:

(a) Make sure that the Czech characters have been entered correctly.
(b) Make sure that in the context in which the character is being displayed, the 'Script' for the font is “Central European”
(c) Ensure that you have support the Czech language loaded in Windows
(d) That the current language is selected on the task bar and that you have chosen Czech (CS) when you run FH.

Here are some tips for all of the above:

(a) Easiest if you a keyboard which allows you to enter Czech characters. If not, there are ways of entering these characters on the numeric keypad (press ALT while enternig the codes), but you don't want to do that if you can avoid it, as memorising codes for letters is not fun. Failing that, you can also use the Character Map program which is available with Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools (at least it is if you're running Windows XP).

(b) Fonts are set in different places. e.g. You can set the font for the Focus Window in the “Focus Window” tab of Preferences (on the Tools menu). If your font does not let you choose “Central European” for the script, choose one that does (e.g. Arial)

( c) If you are running Windows XP (or possibly Windows 2000 or Vista), click on Start > Control Panel. Double-click on “Regional and Language Options”. Click on the Advanced tab and where it says “Select a language to match the language version of non-Unicode programs you want to use”, set this to Czech and press OK.

(d) If you have a non-English language installed, you should see 2 letters in the task bar (bottom right of the Window) showing which language is currently selected. It should be 'CS' for Czech or 'FR' for French etc. If you have more than one language, it will be 'EN' for English. If it isn't already set to 'CS', if you click on whatever it is, a menu should appear. If you did see above 'Czech' should be an option on this menu. Choose it when you are running Family Historian. If you do this, you should see that it changes to 'CS' and (hopefully) Czech characters should now display correctly in Family Historian. Keep an eye on this 'CS' on the status bar. You may find that it switches back if you switch applications. If so, make sure you set it back to 'CS' when you run Family Historian.

If you can't see two letters identifying the language, click on Start > Control Panel. Double-click on “Regional and Language Options”. Click on the Languages tab and then click on the 'Details' button. Then click on 'Language Bar' and finally tick 'Show the Language Bar on the Desktop' and 'Show additional Language bar icons in the taskbar'.

Thanks very much for these detailed suggestions - I'll see if any work for me (I'm using Windows XP).

I use Central European characters confidently without problems in all other programmes - email, Word, Excel etc. It's just FH that won't accept it. In Fh even Ariel doesn't give me the option of CE characters - I just have a choice of Western or Hebrew scripts.