From: Murray Sargent (murrays@Exchange.Microsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jan 14 2004 - 16:46:45 EST
Mike Ayers asked: "On Windows, it is well known that you can generate a
character from its code point by holding down the alt key and typing the
code point in decimal, with a leading 0, on the numeric keypad. I
recall that there is also a method to do this in reverse - given a
character on, say, Wordpad, one can get the Unicode codepoint for that
character (copied to the clipboard, I believe). However, I have
forgotten how to do this. Can anyone help me out here?"
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It's true that in WordPad you can type in the decimal value of a Unicode
(UTF-32) character value and insert the character. This is valid for
programs that use RichEdit 3.0 or later for editing. But you can often
use a better method with RichEdit controls, the Alt+x method, which uses
hexadecimal characters and is editable on the fly. This works as
follows:
You type a character's hexadecimal code (in ASCII), making corrections
as need be, and then type Alt+x. Presto! The hexadecimal code is
replaced by the corresponding Unicode character. The Alt+x can be a
toggle (as in Microsoft Word 2002-2003). That is, type it once to
convert the hex code to a character and type it again to convert the
character back to a hex code. If the hex code is preceded by one or more
hexadecimal digits, you need to "select" the code so that the preceding
hexadecimal characters aren't included in the code. The code can range
up to the value 0x10FFFF, which is the highest character value in the 17
planes of Unicode. The only problem with this approach is that some
programs use Alt+x for something else (like quit) or the keyboard
doesn't have direct access to ASCII alphabetics. For such programs you
can use the "secret" toggle Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F12 instead of Alt+x (only
works with RichEdit, i.e., not with Word).
Murray
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