The Character Map... Who else has noticed it?

[Mr. Picklesworth]

It's taken me a good while, but I decided that after a day of headaches over Samba and weird bugs I should think of something positive.

It took me a while to notice it, but a few months ago I discovered the Character Map that comes with Ubuntu and I screamed with joy. This thing is an incredibly nice piece of software.
Not only does it give a huge library of special characters organized into what kind of script they are, but it actually doubles as a complete encyclopedia for those characters. Every single special character has tons of information associated with it!
This comes in really handy when coupled with the Search function. I can type "degrees" and be given a degrees sign, type "sixteenth note" and be given the musical note, type "quarter" and be given 1/4...
Of course, it also has a catalog of those fancy Chinese symbols, so I can sort of figure that stuff out using the character map. (And they are very cool things... this understanding of them that the character map has given me has helped to explain the I-Ching... and now that I mention that, it seems to even have the 64 hexagrams listed!).

Anyway, it's an incredible tool. I could go on for a while about bugs, glitches and "Why?!"s, but it's little miracles like this that are why I love this operating system.

Thanks, Gnome developers, for an amazing tool. I, for one, am liking what Gnome can do when it is allowed to show lots of features, and I look forward to more.

[coder_]

Yes, it is quite useful for writing papers for Spanish class :)


On an off topic note: Hey! An old Blitz3D user :) (Which is primarily the reason I posted here, the above was just a sad attempt to make this post not seem off topic ;)

[argie]

I love it too. Especially those cool Han characters. What I don't like is that many characters are missing or blank or squares. Does someone else have this problem?

[BioTeX]

There are blanks because the selected font doesn't have every single unicode character implemented. Still, there are quite a lot in the major fonts. Quite fun to browse through them.

[BioTeX]

Hopefully I won't need to write anything in Canadian aboriginal...

[zcal]

Yes, it is quite useful for writing papers for Spanish class :)

Have you tried the Tabla de Caracteres that you can add to the Gnome panel? You can set up your own sets of readily available characters right there on your panel. It's extremely useful for me since I have to write quite a bit in Spanish. I set up a paleta of all the characters needed to write in Spanish that I can't easily use on my American keyboard. It's nice to have a character set that you can readily access and can be applied in all applications. :-D

[raul_]

The Greek letters rock :)

[dbbolton]

i use a drawer with a custom character palette inside

[drphilngood]

i use a drawer with a custom character palette inside

Me, too.

[Brunellus]

I just use a keymap-changer applet. I have us, gb and es keymaps. very very useful indeed.

[Hex_Mandos]

I noticed it, and found it useless for my purposes. I need a way to type accents easily, and I had to rely on a suboptimal keyboard layout (because the layout that corresponds to mine key for key won't let me use accents the easy way, by pressing '+vowel.

[Iandefor]

I just setup a hotkey to switch between English and Spanish layouts so I don't have to stop typing to get accent marks.

¿Qué fácil, no?

[mcduck]

The Character Map is great, and I just love all these characters I can get with UTF-8.. Remembering the old days of ASCII and not even being able to use all letters in my old language, and now I can type with viking runes if I want :D

Have you noticed that you can get quite a lot special characters using the Alt Gr (and Shift) key and letters on your keyboard? For example © comes with AltGr+C, Shift-AltGr+C gives ¢ and Shift-AltGr+A gives º..

[argie]

I noticed it, and found it useless for my purposes. I need a way to type accents easily, and I had to rely on a suboptimal keyboard layout (because the layout that corresponds to mine key for key won't let me use accents the easy way, by pressing '+vowel.
If you're using GNOME, you can setup the Compose key, like so:
System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layout Options > Compose key position

Once you've chosen a compose key,
Compose + ', then pressing e = é, Compose + / + u = µ and stuff like that. There's a whole table somewhere but I've forgotten the filename.




There are blanks because the selected font doesn't have every single unicode character implemented. Still, there are quite a lot in the major fonts. Quite fun to browse through them.
Oh, that's what I thought. Thanks. Any idea which one has all the Han characters?

[Old Pink]

The character map is quite handy, and your right, the information is brilliant when searching. Perhaps in future it could be made into a wiki-style directory where people with an internet connection can add their own details and read others too? That way you'd get a more accurate set of results...

இஒஓஃஂ

[zcal]

If you're using GNOME, you can setup the Compose key, like so:
System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layout Options > Compose key position

Once you've chosen a compose key,
Compose + ', then pressing e = é, Compose + / + u = µ and stuff like that. There's a whole table somewhere but I've forgotten the filename.

Hey that is handy!

[mhenriday]

I haven't yet been able to find my way to the Character Map, but I did find the discussion on various keyboard layouts of great interest. When I had XP and Word installed on my computer, I often made use of a little table that I had prepared from the Table de caractères Unicode (http://unicode.coeurlumiere.com/) to write in certain graphs that weren't immediately available on my (Norwegian) keyboard (to write Chinese and Japanese, I used the language bar and the IMEs), but to which I could gain access by using the Alt key and the numpad keys (with Num Lock on) to the right of the keyboard. To give an example of what I mean, here below is an excerpt from the table :


€ = Alt + 0128
¥ = Alt + 0165
Ç = Alt + 0199
ç = Alt + 0231
Ć = Alt + 0262
ć = Alt + 0263
Č = Alt + 0268
č = Alt + 0269

I notice that it is possible to choose a layout alternative in which '[s]hift with numpad keys works as in MS Windows.' Does anyone know if it is possible to arrange the layout so that Alt + numpad keys would work as they do in Windows/Word ?...

Henri

[simosx]

Hey that is handy!

See for more on this at the UbuntuGuide entry, at
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy#How_to_set_the_Compose_key_to_type_spe cial_characters

Where can you find the complete list of characters?
It is in the source code of a file of the GTK+ library, at
http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gtk%2B/gtk/gtkimcontextsimple.c?view=markup

Do not get intimidated by the big file; near the beginning there is a table with the "Multi_Key" lines. The Multi Key is the Compose key. Therefore,

GDK_Multi_key, GDK_parenleft, GDK_c, 0, 0, 0x00A9, /* COPYRIGHT_SIGN */

means that if you press

Compose + ( + c : ©

(Compose key: you assign it to a physical key you need from the Keyboard preferences. By default it is not assigned to a key, so not available).

Other special characters are not currently supported, though in the future they will probably be.

Another alternative to typing special characters is to use the Unicode codepoint number which you can locate in Character Map.
For example,
Ctrl+Shift+41 : A (41: hex value of A)

[mcduck]

oh, that's too complex.. you guys should just get a keyboard with the AltGr key ;)

[Hex_Mandos]

Hey, I missed the reply. Thanks! That's precisely what I needed. I'll probably translate the howto for the Argentina LoCo team.

[mhenriday]

...

Oh, that's what I thought. Thanks. Any idea which one has all [emphasis added-MHD] the Han characters?

Excellent question ! I've tried to make more Chinese graphs (汉字) available on my keyboard by downloading all the Chinese fonts I could find, with some success, but nevertheless a large number of the graphs found in the Table de caractères Unicode (http://unicode.coeurlumiere.com/?n=16384) are still reproduced on my computer in the form of squares containing their respective hexadecimal codes. Does anyone know a way to make all these graphs available in usable form ?...

Henri

PS ： Oh, and by the way :


恭贺新春！