If you wish to insert a character into your text, the On Screen Keyboard Character Map can be used to find and insert any standard Unicode character. Note that you may need special fonts to view or use some characters.
Note
The Character Map is only available in Keyman Desktop Professional and Keyman Desktop Corporate.
To display the Character Map:
Right click on the Keyman Desktop icon
in the system tray.
From the Keyman menu select On Screen Keyboard.
Click the View Character Map icon
in the On Screen Keyboard Toolbar.
Note
For more information on the toolbar, see On Screen Keyboard.
Using the Character Map
To insert a character into your document:
Position the text cursor where you want to insert the character.
Locate the desired character in the Character Map and insert it by:
selecting the character and pressing the Enter key,
double-clicking on the character, or
right-clicking on the character and selecting Insert Character.
Note
If the Insert Mode is set to Code or Name, pressing Enter or double-clicking on the character will insert the Unicode code or name of the character, not the character itself!
Insert Modes
There are three insert modes: Code, Character and Name:
Code inserts the character's Unicode code
Character inserts the character itself
Name inserts the character's Unicode name
To change the insert mode:
Right-click on the Character Map.
Highlight the Insert Mode submenu.
Choose the desired mode from the Insert Mode submenu.
Character Map Options
When you right click on the Character Map, the following menu options are displayed:
Insert Character | Inserts the selected character at the cursor position in your document. |
Filter... | Displays the Filter dialog box. See Filtering below. |
Goto... | Displays the Goto dialog box. See Using Goto below. |
Font... | Allows you to choose a different font for viewing the Character Map. Note: This does not affect the font being used in your document! |
Insert Mode | Allows you to select the character insert mode you want. See Insert Modes above. |
Display Quality | Allows you to select a different font display quality for the Character Map. The options are:
|
Characters and Fonts
When a character is not available in the selected font, the Character Map will fall back to Code2000, Code2001, Code2002, Arial Unicode MS and Lucida Sans Unicode fonts. If the character is not found in these fallback fonts, the Character Map will use font linking to attempt to find a character from other fonts installed on the system, and as a last resort, will show a square box if no suitable font can be found.
Filtering
The Character Map can be filtered by Unicode character name or character range. Filters can be entered in the Filter By field at the bottom of the Character Map; a quick reference user interface dialog to help you edit the filter is available by clicking the [...] button.
When no filter is applied, the Character Map will show all characters from the Unicode 5.0 standard.
All filter strings are case insensitive. Character names use the letters A-Z, numerals 0-9, and punctuation underscore (_) and hyphen (-).
Spaces between words in the filter are represented either by underscore (_) or space ( ) and can be used interchangeably.
A filter can be for a range or on the Unicode Character Name.
* The filter format for a range is:
[U+]XXXX-[U+]YYYY
Where U+ is optional, XXXX is the starting Unicode value and YYYY is the finishing Unicode value.
* The filtering options for Unicode Character Names are:
Examples
filter | result |
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A" | Finds all Latin capital A variations |
"LATIN * LETTER A" | finds all Latin capital and lower case A variations |
"LATIN * LETTER [AEIOU]" | finds all all Latin A,E,I,O or U vowel combinations |
"<Thai" | finds the Thai Unicode block |
">LAO" | finds all characters with names starting in "LAO" in the current font |
"YI_" | finds all characters with names starting in "YI " - you must use _ and not ' ' at the end of a search string. Note that without the _, this search also matches YIN_YANG. |
"LATIN * LETTER A$" | finds only "a" and "A" |
"1000-119F" | finds all characters between U+1000 and U+119F (inclusive) - the Myanmar alphabet in this case |
Goto
The Goto tool can be used to move directly to a specific Unicode character or value.
Right click on a character and select Goto.
The Enter Unicode character value or name dialog box will be displayed:
Enter the Unicode character value - e.g. "006B" or "U+006B"
OR enter the start of the character name, e.g. "LAO_LETTER" will go to LAO_LETTER_KO, being the first character that matches. You can substitute spaces for underscores if you prefer.
Click OK. The character map will attempt to move to the character you specified.