* Croatian characters not accepted in FH5

[avwhite]

Hi everyone,

I am new to FH, still on demo version with a view of purchasing the SW, but have come across an issue that I hope someone can help me with. As my family is Croatian, we of course have special characters in some of our names

The problem I have in FH5 is that when I use 3 Croatian letters (č & ć both lower- and uppercase, and đ lowercase only) those automatically go to "c", "c" and "d", i.e. the accents are removed on all letters, in all FH5 windows and views. Other Croatian special characters are fine (Đ uppercase, š & ž both lower/uppercase).
Those 3 letters (upper and lower) always lose the accent as soon as cursor is moved to another field (for example in PROPERTIES window of a person).

I have tried changing the fonts and scripts on all available menus in Tools - Preferences with no result.
Copying and pasting from Character Map doesn't work.
Importing gedcom file from another app (which does show these characters) is same and still doesn't work and those characters lose their accents. The GEDCOM files from another app, opened in Notepad - show these characters correctly.

Letters that are the problem (just in case they end up not displaying properly in this webpage as well when i post) are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%86
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_stroke

I have already searched the forum (keywords CHARACTER, INTERNATIONAL, SPECIAL CHARACTER) and can't find anything that would resolve my problem. I have tried suggestions in below posts but none worked.
http://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=8622
http://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=10792
http://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=5278

Could someone please try these letters and let me know if they have the same issue, so I at least know if it's my machine that has the issue or the FH5 software. Note - I have not experienced this issue with Croatian characters in any other app on this same machine ever.

thanks a mill
Anita

[Jane]

At the moment FH does not support UniCode (although it is on the wish list).

However I would expect though that you should be able to use Family Historian with Croatian characters . I know this is a repeat of something from one of the thread you quoted, but it normally works fine. If you can explain what when wrong when you changed as below

If you can enter Croatian characters but they do not display correctly in the Records Window (the main window listing all records) try changing the font on the Records Window to Arial.

To do this, click on Tools > Record Window Options and then choose the Display tab and click on the 'Select' button to select the new font.

But before pressing OK, make sure you have selected “Central European” in the Script area near the bottom of the dialog box. You will need to do a similar "trick" for fonts on the focus window, diagrams, reports etc.

If you are running Windows XP (or possibly Windows 2000 or Vista) and if you're still having problems and the Croatian characters are not appearing correctly in some or all contexts, 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 Croatian and press OK.

[BillH]

Anita,

I just tried using Ð and it worked fine for me. I entered it by holding down the alt key and then keying in 0240. Is that the method you are using to enter these characters?

Bill

[tatewise]

Yes Ð is one of the characters that Anita said was OK.
Note Alt 0240 = ð (which Anita does not mention) and Alt 0208 = Ð.

It is my understanding that FH uses Windows Code Page 1252 as described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252.
There you will see characters č Č ć Ć đ are NOT listed.
Whereas, all the characters Ð š Š ž Ž are listed.

I am not sure if Jane's suggestions can overcome this Code Page 1252 limitation.

[EDIT 29-Oct]
Using Region and Language to set Croatian will change Windows & FH to use Code Page 1250 which supports the problem characters identified above as defined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1250.
However, the GEDCOM file will not then be compatible with other Windows PC set to Code Page 1252 unless you export the file in UTF-8 format.

[BillH]

I missed that the upper case Ð was working.

Bill

[tatewise]

The Ð and ð or Eth is defined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth.
May be entered using Alt 0208 and lower case version using Alt 0240
They are Unicode 00D0 and Unicode 00F0
These are both in the Code Page 1252 character set of FH.

However, the Croatian characters Đ and đ are defined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_stroke.
They are visually very similar to Eth but are in fact different.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_with_str ... biguation)
They are Unicode 0110 and Unicode 0111
Neither are in the Code Page 1252 character set, but are in Code Page 1250 instead of the Eth characters.
Many other characters are also different between the two Code Pages which means exchanging with other PC needs extra care.

[avwhite]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions...

Jane - this one from you got the letters showing ok - THANK YOU - 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 Croatian and press OK

So for anyone out there having the same problem - in Regional settings in Windows, on Advanced tab - select Croatian to be your language for non-Unicode programs, and then set all the Font options in FH Tools - Preferences and Diagrams - Options - General - Font and Diagrams - Options - Text - Edit to be a Arial Central European (or another that covers Central European) and all your Croatian letters should display properly now.

thanks all
Anita