ศาลาชุมนุม

[tstatton]

Why are thai fonts so small? They all seem to be size 6 or something. Websites are like this and magazines as well. It's hard reading when you get a little older like my eyes are. It just seems like they try to get a lot of type in a small area. Maybe that's why Thai's don't like to put spaces between words. I try to get the text size as large as I can but it still is small.

[Glenn Slayden]

I think it's because the 'point size' has to account for the case where there are two superscripts: a superscripted vowel plus a tone mark above that. In order for word processing programs to function properly, they have to know about this "worst-case" situation, so that they can allow enough space for each line of text without overlapping the previous.

Just a theory...?

[tstatton]

That's true. That would mean they would need to allot more space between lines. Maybe it would then take up much more space as the fonts get bigger than in English. David and Bui mention that Firefox browser does a better job. I do use Mozilla as my browser, as well as IE, but I don't see any appreciable difference. There seems to be no effect when I use the view tab to increase the font. It could be that I am so much more familiar with English text, despite considerable experience reading Thai, that I pick it up much easier and the lack of space between words makes it more difficult to read. Still it seems like even the tabs are very small, such as this website for Thaitown USA. http://www.thaitownusa.com/.

[Josh]

This isn't exactly a solution, per se, but one thing that might help is that (in FF at least) you can hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and use the mouse wheel to increase or decrease the font size on a website page. That would certainly help.

[tstatton]

That's great. I didn't realize that. And it seems to work both in English and Thai. Thanks.

[claude06thailand]

hello everybody !

I found this solution to copy everything in Word (unformatted unicode text, angsana new.ttf) so that I can choose the right size easily.
When necessary, I copy both HTML and Unicode. Then I can work on it without being connected.

have a nice day !
Claude

[Rick Bradford]

The resizing method works in Google Chrome too. Neat tip!

[Thomas]

The resizing method works in Google Chrome too. Neat tip!

The same effect can be reached, with key board only, by ctrl + plus (+) and ctrl + minus (-).

[Josh]

hah! That one I didn't know, r2. Thanks for that one.

[Richard Wordingham]

In order for word processing programs to function properly, they have to know about this "worst-case" situation, so that they can allow enough space for each line of text without overlapping the previous.

Actually, I'd say it's for simple programs displaying text, in scripts without complex lay-out. A word-processing program has to handle changes in font size from letter to letter. Word styles allow font size to be a function of script - I frequently used a mixture of 12 points for Latin and 18 points for Thai in Word. For web pages I compromise by using Tahoma - it squeezes the Thai subscripts and superscripts, so one 'size' fits both Latin and Thai. I've watched a text-display program think long and hard before allocating extra space to accommodate superscript characters. I believe there were also plans to allow Word to do vertical kerning - so lines need only be moved apart to prevent ascenders and descenders clashing.