Text box allowing language other than English?

[siliconmike]

Is it possible to have a text box that takes inputs, not in English,
but in another language ?

Please help

Mike

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Is it possible to have a text box that takes inputs, not in English,
but in another language ?

Yes. Two examples:

<input>
<textarea rows="20" cols="60"></textarea>

(To make them actually useful, you need to add name="..." attributes at
least.)

What made you think that the input would be limited to English?

The user's environment may make typing some characters difficult. Did you
expect to fix that in your HTML code?

The data to be passed to the form handler may contain non-Ascii characters,
and this has implications on the form design, but that's true for English
as well. And that's a different issue - you only asked about a text box
taking input.

I think you need to present your real problem before we can make
intelligent guesses on the answers.

 

[siliconmike]

Well here's the problem in detail:

I'm making a website and I'd like to also have complete versions of the
site in different languages of my choice.

What I know is that text can be displayed in many languages using
Unicode encoding.

But what I don't know or what I've never seen is that how can one
enable the user who visits the site, to fill up a form in the same
language as the text being displayed on the site ?

I want to understand the process of typing in a form in a different
language. How would I code the form in HTML ? Would the user need to
install specific fonts for that language ? Do the new browsers come
bundled with those fonts. And whether the user would need to install
specific software to convert his keystrokes to UNICODE codes that are
somehow pipelined to the browser while he is typing ?

Mike

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Well here's the problem in detail:

Actually, you didn't give much detail.

But what I don't know or what I've never seen is that how can one
enable the user who visits the site, to fill up a form in the same
language as the text being displayed on the site ?

So you haven't visited a multilingual site that has a form, yet wish to
create one? I'd suggest visiting such sites, for example the Google site
(where a form is fairly essential and used by millions of people).

I want to understand the process of typing in a form in a different
language.

Different from what?

You need to understand the form concept first, then the character encoding
issue. This won't be easy. Don't expect to learn it from casual Usenet
postings. It's very difficult to suggest things to read, since we cannot
where you start from. Have you implemented a site with a simple form? How?
What do you plan to do with the form data in this new project?

How would I code the form in HTML ?

There's nothing in an HTML form that says what can be typed into its
fields. You write it like any other form, though if you expect anything but
Ascii data, you should (in principle at least) use method="get" and
enctype="multipart/form-data". These have essential implications on the
form handler. Moreover, the character encoding of the page where the form
appears should normally be utf-8 if it should be possible to enter any
characters in input.

Would the user need to
install specific fonts for that language ? Do the new browsers come
bundled with those fonts. And whether the user would need to install
specific software to convert his keystrokes to UNICODE codes that are
somehow pipelined to the browser while he is typing ?

Are these your problems? There's plenty of work to be done in the form
processing, and some work to be done with the HTML document. Helping users
with their problems is a noble goal, but a different project, and a really
tough one. You don't know what languages they understand, what keyboards
they use, not to mention browsers and operating systems.