Solar Fire 5, 6 and 7 will have problems with languages that don't use the western alphabet (I.E. ASCII alphabet). This includes Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Russian, Central European Languages, (I.E. Unicode Enabled Languages). That is because the Astro Glyph font that comes with Solar Fire is made for the western alphabet. Solar Fire has font problems with Japanese, Chinese & Hebrew-Enabled Windows 98, 2000, and ME. If you are using one of those Windows systems, you may not want to upgrade at this time. There is a work-around for using Solar Fire with Windows XP or higher.

On non western windows you can solve it by getting Windows XP or higher. In XP or higher there is now a setting that will let Solar Fire work. You go into control panel in the icon labeled 'regional and language settings' in that screen there is a tab that says 'advanced' and on that screen you select 'English' where it says 'Language for non unicode programs.'

This will allow Solar Fire to work, and your non English programs will work too, but you may or may not be able to print depending on your printer. The printer must support English also. Some printers (especially Japanese ones) do not. American printers will work with both languages.