UG: Chars (changes)

Chars is in the Apps icon bar directory. To start the application, double-click on the !Chars application icon. The application window appears on the desktop.

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The Chars window shows the entire character set of the font. At the top of the window is the name of the font. Underneath that, for fonts that support it, the current encoding is displayed. Next to that, for fonts in the UTF8 encoding, the current category of displayed characters is shown. (Encodings and categories are explained further below.)

Moving the mouse pointer over a character displays information on it in the bar at the bottom of the window, such as its standard name and the keypress code needed to enter it. The format of this information varies a little depending on the selected encoding.

You can use Chars to insert a character into any document, window or menu. For example, in an Edit window, in a menu item (such as the New directory box or file Rename boxes), or in any application that uses text, such as a word processor.

Inserting a character

There are two ways of using Chars to insert characters. The method you use depends whether you want to insert the character into an application window or a menu dialogue box.

Inserting characters into application windows

To insert a character into a window, click on it. The character will appear at the caret position in the window you are currently typing in (the window with the light-coloured Title bar).

For example, if you are using a word processor and want to put in a special character using Chars, just click on the character in the Chars window and it will appear in your document.

Inserting characters into menus

You can also insert a character by positioning the pointer over the character you wish to use, and pressing Shift. Use this method if you want to use a character from Chars as part of a filename (by entering it into a Save as dialogue box) or as part of any other menu box. Clicking on the character in the normal way would make the Save as box disappear.

Limitations on inserting characters

Note that it may not be possible to insert every character in a font if your desktop alphabet setting is different to the font’s selected encoding. Characters that cannot be inserted are displayed in light grey rather than black, and clicking on them or pressing Shift has no effect.

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Using fonts

When you first run Chars, the font that appears is the System font. If you want to use a different font, click on the pop-up menu at the top of the window next to the font name field. This displays a menu list of all the currently available fonts. Choose the one you want to use, and the characters for that font will appear in the Chars window.

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You will also need to select the corresponding font in the application you are using to ensure that the character you select in Chars matches the one that appears in your text application. For example, suppose the caret is in the middle of a text line displayed in the font Trinity Medium. Even if you display the Selwyn font in your Chars window, any characters you select from Chars will appear in the corresponding Trinity Medium form, rather than in Selwyn.

Using an outline desktop font

If you are using the one of the outline fonts as your desktop font you should make sure that when you insert Chars characters that the Chars display also uses the same outline font. If you don’t, you may find that the character you choose is not the same as the one entered in the menu box.

Alphabets and encodings

Outline fonts in RISC OS can be displayed in a range of encodings. Encodings determine the order of characters within the font and the range of characters available. To see the list of encodings available for a font, click on the pop-up menu next to the Encodings field:

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Selecting the Default encoding means that no special encoding information is applied to the font. This is useful for so-called ‘symbol’ fonts, like Selwyn and Sidney, which do not display traditional alphanumeric characters. The UTF8 encoding is a special setting that enables thousands of characters to be displayed. All other encodings, such as Latin1, are limited to less than 256 characters.

In addition to fonts having encodings, the desktop also uses its own encoding, known as an alphabet. The font encoding and desktop alphabet should match in order to guarantee that a character selected in Chars will be reproduced correctly when inserted elsewhere. For example, if your desktop alphabet is UTF8, then you should use fonts in the UTF8 encoding. If the alphabet is Latin 1, then you should use the Latin1 encoding for ‘standard’ fonts such as Trinity Medium, or the Default encoding for ‘symbol’ fonts, such as Sidney.

You can find out more about alphabets and how to set them in Appendix H: Character sets on page XXX.

Using font categories

The UTF8 encoding is unique in that it allows thousands of characters to be displayed (if they are defined within the font). Finding the right character in very large fonts can be cumbersome, so Chars allows you to limit the display to certain categories of characters, based on language (such as Greek or Hebrew) or type (such as Symbols or Currency).

To see the list of available categories, make sure you have selected a font in the UTF8 encoding, and click on the pop-up menu icon next to the Categories field:

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Select All to show all the defined characters in a font.

Alt key-numeric keypad combinations

The characters entered using Chars can also be entered using Alt+numeric keypad combinations. To enter a character using the numeric keypad, hold down the Alt key, type the number on the numeric keypad, then release Alt. The numbers map to letters in whatever desktop alphabet is active. For example, in the Latin 1 alphabet, Alt-64 will enter the @ character.

Chars displays the keypad combination for the character under the mouse pointer in the information bar:

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Codes for some alphabets are also listed on page XXX. You can also enter special characters using multiple keystrokes – see Keyboard short-cuts on page XXX.

Inserting spaces

Be careful when using Chars to insert spaces. Undefined characters in a font are represented by white spaces in the Chars window, so inserting what looks like a space may cause unpredictable results in other applications. To be sure of only inserting the correct space character, make sure that the information bar shows Character &20 (in alphabets such as Latin 1) or U+0020 SPACE (in the UTF8 alphabet).

Setting choices

Click Menu over the Chars icon on the icon bar, and select Choices… to open the Choices dialogue box.

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From here you can select whether to open the Chars window automatically when the application is run, and whether to use the System font or your current desktop outline font as the default.