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		Introduction Writing systems   Western alphabets   Non-Western alphabets   Phonetic and offbeat   Varying glyphs   CJK   Miscellaneous Solutions   Types of fonts   Inserting single characters   Inserting diacritics: á, à, â, ä, ...   Keyboard layouts   Input methods   Multilingual browsing				If you want to display and type text in languages such as Arabic and Chinese, some tuning of your Windows system is required. In particular, you need a script-specific Windows addon that includes an appropriate Input Method Editor or IME. We shall refer to IMEs simply as 'input methods'. An IME is a resident program that intercepts the communication between you and your Windows system (input & display respectively). This section is devoted to the IMEs supplied by Microsoft. For IMEs provided by other companies, visit the appropriate language-specific page.  Contents:   Installing an input method (IME) Problems with input methods
		Installing an input method (IME)				To use right-to-left or complex East Asian scripts in Windows, you can choose from the IMEs shipped with and similar utilities released by third parties. As from Windows 2000 / XP, the IMEs developed by Microsoft work acceptably. (By the way, many of the Windows add-ons provided by other companies work with older versions of Windows as well.) This is how you install original Windows input methods: -   Open the Control Panel (Start menu | Settings) and then the "Regional and Language Settings" dialog box. -   In that dialog box, check the "support for additional languages" box, that is, input methods for right-to-left and CJK scripts. -   Finally, install the IME for the language of your choice.
		Problems with input methods				The IMEs (Input Method Editors) that ship with Windows are supposed to assist you in displaying and typing in text in certain complex scripts. Unfortunately, they do not work always work as expected to. This is especially true for the IMEs supplied with versions older than Windows 2000. Take into account also the limitations of your software. For example, VTrain version 4.5 was not fully Unicode-enabled yet. The following problems have been reported by VTrain users: -   Faulty control over the text cursor. -   Characters are sometimes rotated by 90°. -   In certain scripts, sometimes words are cut in two by linebreaks. Awkward workaround: format the spaces in a standard font (like Times New Roman or Arial). You may also use a macro created by the SIL to simplify this task. It is located here . -   The IME forces the fonts supplied by Microsoft upon the target editor, so you cannot use the font of your choice (!). The font format cannot be modified afterwards either. If you try, your command is simply ignored by Windows, not even an error message appears.
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