CharacterMap Plugin V1.3

Introduction

The character map plugin displays a window showing all ASCII and extended characters. Clicking one will insert it into the buffer.

Various encodings are supported, including full Unicode 6.1.0.

To see many Unicode characters, you may need to activate font substitution in jEdit and to install large fonts in your system.

Description

In a dockable window a character table is shown. Clicking on a character with Button 1 on the mouse (typically the left button) will cause the character to be inserted at the cursor position in the current buffer.

Additional information about the characters is given in the status line. Pressing and holding button 3 on the mouse (typically the right button) will display an enlarged version of the character overlayed at the current pointer position.

The characters in the table are rendered in the font style and size selected for the text area. The anti-alias and fractional font metrics options are honoured. Additional fonts can be used via font substitution. Activate this feature in "jEdit - Global Options - Text Area - Font Substitution". A list of preferred fonts and / or all fonts installed on the system are searched for characters. Large multi-script fonts are e.g. Code2000-2002, Quivira, Arial Unicode MS.

Beside the normal characters, there are the following entries :

1. Blue + number: ISO control characters.
2. White + replacement symbol: Characters with missing fonts.
3. Green: Private Use Area: User defined characters / fonts.
4. Grey: Not assigned to characters. For future Unicode versions and technical use.
5. Red + replacement symbol: Invalid table entries without Unicode representation.

For the encoding "US-ASCII", the table contains 128 characters. For all other non-Unicode encodings the table contains 256 characters, that represent (often) the entire character set.

For Unicode (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32) the table displays the selected unicode block, shown in the blocks combo box. By default, only the "basic multilingual plane" is shown, i.e. the first 65536 unicode characters. In the options (see below) you can activate all Unicode planes.

The encoding of the table is shown in the encoding combo box (if enabled). You can change it with the dropdown list or directly type it into the text field. Encodings typed into the text field are stored during the session, to ease later selection. You can change the content of the encoding combo box permanently in "jEdit - Global Options - Encodings - Selected Encodings".

The encoding of the current buffer / file is shown in the jEdit status line. Opening or changing a buffer resets the table to the encoding of the buffer. Character Map will refuse to insert characters from different encodings into a non-unicode buffer. If you still want to insert the character, you must change the encoding in the jEdit buffer options. Be careful: Some applications may require a specific encoding. Also, if you change to another non-Unicode encoding, some other characters of the buffer may not be present in the new encoding. Java works internally in Unicode. Codepoints from non-unicode encodings, which have no unicode equivalent, are shown in red as invalid characters. They cannot be inserted into the buffer.

Options

• Show encoding combo box: Controls whether the encoding combo box is displayed. By default the encoding is selected from the encoding specified for the currently selected buffer.
• Show Unicode blocks combo box: Controls whether the Unicode blocks combo box is displayed. The blocks combo box is only enabled when editing a Unicode buffer or when Unicode encoding has been specified in the encoding combo box.
• Sort Unicode blocks alphabetically: Alphabetic order. If the option is unchecked, the blocks are in the order of the Unicode database, i.e. sorted by increasing codepoints, starting with "Basic Latin".
• Include higher Unicode planes: Not only the blocks from plane 1 (Basic Multilingual Plane), but also from higher planes are shown. This enables Unicode characters with codepoints > 65536 or 0xFFFF. Be aware: This is a beta feature, since Java encodes these characters with two elementary chars instead of one, and you may experience compatibility issues in jEdit.
• Always use Anti-Aliasing: If set, the character glyphs are always rendered anti-aliased (smoothed). If not set the Anti-Aliasing options are taken from the Global Options -> Text Area settings.
• Table columns: specify the number of columns to be displayed...
1. floating: if the table is floating (un-docked).
2. docked l/r: if the table is docked left or right.
3. docked t/b: if the table is docked at top or bottom.
• Table colors: specify colors of the table cells for the different character types (see description above).
• Show status line: controls whether the status line at the bottom of the window is displayed. The status line contains
1. the character code point in decimal and hexadecimal form,
2. the bytes forming the character in hexadecimal form (for UTF-encoded Unicode,
3. the name of the character (for Unicode).
• Large character: displays a large representation of the character under the cursor in the top-right hand corner of the window.
1. Show large character: display the character.
2. Large character size: controls the size (in points) of the large character.
• Show right-click character: displays a representation of the character under the cursor when the right-mouse button is pressed overlayed at the current cursor position.
1. Show right-click character: display the character.
2. Right-click character size: controls the size (in points) of the right-click character.

Version History

Version 1.1 (2002)

Version 1.2 (2004)

Version 1.3.0 (2011)

Version 1.3.1 (2012)

Version 1.3.2 (2012)

Version 1.3.3 (2012)