[GAMacky]

The manual says that it supports 1-byte and 2-byte characters. But there's a big difference between what is called a double-byte characters and Unicode characters. Double-byte characters are 2 characters combined to represent a single character. The first character of a double-byte character must be in a certain value range for the application to recognize that the character and the next character combined are part of a double-byte character. This was used mainly in Asian countries before Unicode came along (win95, win98, winNT3, winNT4). Now, all new Windows uses Unicode (winMe, win2000, winXP), not double-byte. Unless you have special software installed, these new windows will not recognize and display double-byte characters. Unicode basically means each character is now represented with an extra byte period. It's not considered double-byte because there's no single byte any more. The character set is now completely different than the old double-byte character sets. However, to allow backward compatibility, applications developed using the single-byte code base, can still work with some magic in Windows. They just won't support Unicode because they weren't designed to. In order for the application to work with Unicode, the application must use unicode enabled Windows API calls and Unicode enabled functions. So far, from my test of the KPro4 demo, it's not using Unicode at all. Any Unicode characters beyond U+00FF entered into the Lyrics screen shows up as question marks(?), which indicates that it's not Unicode enabled. Since the new windows do not produce double-byte characters, there's no way for me to test if it works with double-byte characters. I'll try to find a utility that'll convert between Unicode and double-byte. If I find one, I'll post the result of the test. Since I don't know what will go into version 5, as the web site states that it's completely rewritten, I'm hoping that it'll be Unicode enabled. If not, please consider it. I've searched long and hard for a lyric editor that can handle Unicode. I was so hopeful when the manual for KPro4 states that it supports 2-byte characters. But was totally disappointed when it doesn't support Unicode. If any of you knows the new features list of KPro5, please let me know. Thanks.