Abstract: The method of the invention allows both single-byte character set (SBCS) and double-byte character set (DBCS) fonts in a DBCS code page. The invention stores the SBCS and DBCS text of the document in separate areas. Each area contains the following specific information about the text: the actual text itself, the length in bytes of the text, the horizontal starting position of the text, the font attributes for that text, a flag to indicate that the text is SBCS or DBCS text, and the value which points to the next area containing some text. The font attributes contain information such as the font typeface name, point size, color, weight, width, and the value to indicate whether the font type is an SBCS or a DBCS font type. A document is then set up to use different fonts, SBCS or DBCS, for specific sections of text and alternating back and forth between the fonts as many times as is necessary.

Abstract: In a single-byte character set English text mixed with a double-byte character set Japanese text, both an English spelling aid and a Japanese spelling aid can be provided and each respective spelling aid will be invoked depending upon whether the SBCS character set is indicated for English text or the DBCS character set is indicated for Japanese text. Still further, for a text which is mixed national languages of for example, English and German, the linguistic flag field can include additional information identifying the national language for a particular text string. Then if the linguistic flag field indicates that there is a misspelling for German, or a misspelling for English, then the corresponding text string can be highlighted on the display screen.