# &app; Manual V&manrevision;

2003
Chee Bin HOH
GNOME Documentation Project

&legal;

Chee Bin
HOH
GNOME Documentation Project

     cbhoh@gnome.org

Unicode Character Map Manual V&manrevision;
&date;

Chee Bin HOH cbhoh@gnome.org

GNOME Documentation Project

This manual describes version &appversion; of Unicode Code Character.

## Feedback

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding the &app; application or this manual, follow the directions in the GNOME Feedback Page.

## Introduction

&app; is a Unicode/ISO10646 character map and font viewer. It enables you to access characters in other languages, special symbols and punctuation marks that are encoded using Unicode.

Unicode/ISO10646 is a coded character set and character set standard which intends to include all characters used in all the written languages.

&app; provides the following features:

- Search unicode character by hexadecimal Unicode code point, Unicode name, character dragged from another application or the first character in clipboard.

- Browse through all available unicode characters and unicode blocks for the installed fonts.

- Examine unicode character details which provides useful clickable links to other characters.

- A variety of zoom level views and fonts.

- A variety of ways to copy unicode characters into another application: drag selection, clipboard and Input Method.

## Getting Started

### To Start &app;

You can start &app; in the following ways:

Applications menu

  Choose Accessories Unicode Character Map .

Command line

  - To start &app; from a command line, type the following command, then press Return:

    `gucharmap`

  - To start &app; in a different font and point size, type the following command, then press Return:

    `gucharmap --font="string"`

    where string can include font name and point size (for example, `gucharmap --font="bitstream vera sans italic 20"` or something).

  To view other command line options that are available, type `gucharmap --help`, then press Return.

### When You Start &app;

When you start &app;, the following window is displayed.

#### &app; Start Up Window

Shows &app; main window. Contains titlebar, menubar, toolbar, list pane, character pane and scrollbars. Menubar contains File, View, Search, Go and Help menus.

The &app; window contains the following elements:

Menubar

  The menus on the menubar contain most of the commands you need to use in &app;.

Font Selector

  The font selector section contains the following elements:

  - Font drop-down combination box: Enables you to select a font.

  - Bold button: Enables you to select bold style.

  - Italic button: Enables you to select italic style.

  - Zoom spin box: Enables you to resize characters.

Unicode block pane

  The unicode block pane contains a list of blocks of unicode characters.

Character pane

  The character pane contains the following tabbed sections:

  - Character Table: displays all available unicode characters.

  - Character Details: displays full unicode character details for the active character.

Text to copy

  The text to copy section contains the following elements:

  - Text to copy field: Enables you to enter character you want to copy to clipboard.

  - Copy button: Enables you to copy text from the Text to copy field to clipboard.

Statusbar

  The statusbar displays useful information about the active character, like Unicode character code point, Unicode name, for CJK ideographs, the definition; usage notes if the character has any.

## Usage

You can use the &app; application to perform the following tasks:

### To Find a Character

To find a character, you can use the following methods:

Find Character by Unicode Name or Code Point

  Choose CtrlF Search Find . The Find dialog is displayed, enter the unicode name or unicode code point in the Search field, then press Return or click on the Find button. This will find the occurrences of the characters which match the unicode name or code point that you type.

  Choose CtrlG Search Find Next to find the next matching character. To find the previous matching character, choose ShiftCtrlG Search Find Previous .

  The application supports the following unicode code point formats:

  - U+XXXX

  - 0xXXXX

  - &#xXXXX

  - &#dddd

  - #dddd

  - XXXX (plain hexadecimal digits)

  Where XXXX is the hexadecimal value of unicode code point, dddd is the decimal value of unicode code point. The application checks for all unicode code point formats except the plain hexadecimal digits before searching by unicode name.

  Unicode name is limited to characters [A-Za-z0-9 -]. The application checks the first character you type (excluding leading spaces) to see if it is one of those characters, and if it is not, it jumps to that first character. If you enter exactly one character, the application will jump to that character even it is one of the [A-Za-z0-9 -] characters.

Find Character in Clipboard

  Choose CtrlO Search Character in Clipboard . This will find the first character in clipboard.

Find Character By Dragging

  Drag characters from another application to the &app; Character Table to identify the first character.

You can use X selection to find a character. Highlight the characters, then middle-click on the &app; Character Table, it will identify the first character in selection.

### To Examine a Character

To examine a character, click on the Character Details tab. The Character Details tabbed section provides the following information about each character:

- Unicode code point.

- Unicode character name.

- Unicode category.

- Unicode canonical decomposition.

- UTF-8 encoding (e.g. 0xE2 0x86 0x90).

- Other representations useful to programmers.

- If the clickable links are available, you can click on the links to other characters.

You can choose AltLeft Go Back to go backward the link-following history for the characters. To go forward the link-following history, you can choose AltRight Go Forward .

### To Browse Through all Characters

To browse through all available unicode characters in the Character Table, you can use the following methods:

- Use the arrow keys on the keyboards.

- Use the scrollbars on the window.

- Use the Page Up or the Page Down keys to browse through all characters page by page.

- Use the Home key to jump to the first page of the Character Table. To jump to the last page, use the End key.

- Use the Unicode block pane to browse a block of characters from the Unicode character set.

- Choose CtrlN Go Next Character to browse the next character in unicode sequence. It will skip over unassigned codepoints.

- Choose CtrlP Go Previous Character to browse the previous character in unicode sequence. It will skip over unassigned codepoints.

Right click on a character or press Shift to magnify the active character in the Character Table.

### To Insert Character To another Application

To insert character from &app; to another application, you can use the following methods:

Input Method

  Right click on the text field (or editable area) of another application, choose Input Methods Unicode Character Map . The &app; window is displayed, double click on the character to insert it to the text field of the application.

Drag the Character

  Drag the character from the Character Table to the text field of another application.

Copy To Clipboard

  1. Double click to copy a character to the Text to copy field.

  2. Click on the Copy button to copy the characters to clipboard.

  3. Paste the characters from clipboard to the text field of another application.

### To Change the Zoom Factor

To resize the characters in the Character Table, you can use the following methods:

- To enlarge the characters, choose Ctrl+ View Zoom In or use the Zoom spin box to specify the size.

- To shrink the characters, choose Ctrl- View Zoom Out or use the Zoom spin box to specify the size.

- To make the columns of the Character Table to the power of two, choose View Snap Columns to Power of Two .

### To Change the Font

To change the font, you can use the following methods:

- Use the font drop-down combination box to specify the font.

- Click on the Bold button.

- Click on the Italic button.

## About &app;

&app; was written by Noah Levitt (nlevitt@columbia.edu), Daniel Elstner (daniel.elstner@gmx.net) and Padraig O'Briain (Padraig.Obriain@sun.com). To find more information about &app;, please visit the &app; Web page.

To report a bug or make a suggestion regarding this application or this manual, follow the directions in this document.

This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public license as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of this license can be found at this link, or in the file COPYING included with the source code of this program.