Using extended character sets (UTF-8 and Thai)

[NickH]

I am new to Libre Office, but not to Office Applications.

I am running Libre Office on windows 8.1 and on Windows 7.

Using the latest (4.3) version of Libre Office Calc, I am trying to write an spreadsheet for my wife in German, English and Thai … the western languages are fine (obviously) but when I try and enter Thai into Calc, all that is displayed is the default blank rectangles.

I have enabled “Asian” and “Complex text layout” in Language Settings–>Languages.
I have set CTL to “Thai”
I have changed the Character Set in the Load/Save–>HTML Compatability options to Unicode (UTF-8)

all the above without any effect, I am still unable to enter Thai text.

How do I enable extended character sets for my documents, and enable UTF-8 encoding for them?

Many Thanks for your help.

Nick

[oweng]

Which font is the content displaying as squares written in?

[BenM]

Set the Thai to use either Tahoma, which works here, or Arial Unicode MS. The latter is a Microsoft TrueType font with a very large array of glyphs to handle a great many languages. This is why it’s usually set for the asian languages, because it does cover them (basically for anywhere Microsoft tries to sell their stuff … so that’s the entire planet). The only other font I’ve seen with a larger glyph set than Arial Unicode MS is the shareware Code2000 font, but though it is similar to Time [New Roman], it isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing font. It does, however, support overlay characters, which is pretty rare.