International and Multilingual support

AY Mail can send International and Multilingual messages using Unicode or local character sets. The level of support depends on the operating system. Note that if you send English only messages you should not be concerned.

Windows XP and later has the best multilingual support. You can freely compose messages on many languages provided that support for these languages is installed on your computer.

Windows NT 4.0+/2000 lets you create multilingual messages, but if you do not have proper fonts installed on your computer some of the multilingual text may appear as black or white squares or dots. This does not affect the messages that you are going to send, but may be difficult to work with.

Windows 95/98/ME lets you create messages only using the native language of the operating system. For example, if you have a localized Chinese version of Windows 95, you will be able to send Chinese messages, but not Japanese ones. If you move a project created on Japanese Windows 95 to a Chinese Windows 95 computer, Japanese text may be corrupted or lost. If you really want to send multilingual messages, consider upgrading to Windows XP.

AY Mail automatically selects the character set for the messages that you send based on the message composition. This works fine most of the time, but sometimes needs to be changed. For example, if you send a Russian letter with Greek mathematical symbols in it, AY Mail will select Chinese GB2312 because this character set contains both Russian and Greek characters, but the recipients in Russia may not have any support for GB2312 on their computers, and it is better to use Unicode in this case. Use the Format button on the Message tab to force a specified character set using Message Format dialog.

AY Mail supports RTL reading (Arabic and Hebrew) and always sends it out in logical order. In the AY Mail editor the message is always displayed with LTR being the primary direction. The recipients mailer may display it either LTR or RTL therefore it is best to avoid excessively mixing English with Hebrew or Arabic in the single message.

AY Mail can use Multilingual features of Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is not required for AY Mail to work, but having the latest version of the Internet Explorer will expand AY Mail capabilities. Therefore, if you want to use a character set and it doesn't seem to be supported by AY Mail, you can try to install newer Microsoft Internet Explorer.