When you start Unicode Viewer for the first time you will see a
window with these components:
A menu in the top of the window.
A Toolbar below the Mainmenu with most of its buttons grayed
out.
An Empty Blocklist in the middle left.
An Empty Tableview in the middle right.
A Detailsbar below the Tableview with a checkbox UTF-8 on its
right.
A Lua Console in the bottom of the window.
The application does not display any content by default and this guide
will help you to load a Unicode Table and a Block table.
Required Files
At first we need a Unicode table in the form of a plain text file. There
should be one delivered to you with this application called
"allkeys.txt". If that is not the case download it here: http://www.unicode.org/Public/UCA/latest/allkeys.txt
.
The file contains the definitions of the Unicode letters. Every letter
is defined by a code, a weight and a comment.
E.g.: "0000 ; [.0000.0000.0000.0000] # [0000] NULL (in 6429)"
In this case 0000 is the code, the part in the square brackets the
weight and everything following the # is the comment.
The letters are usually divided into blocks of languages. The blocks are
not defined in the "allkeys" tables, but in a separate file usually
called "Blocks.txt". Again this file should be included in the package
of this application, but can be downloaded from the Unicode page: http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/ucd/Blocks.txt
Please store it for now in the same directory as the "allkeys.txt".
The Blocks.txt contains block definitions. They consist of block names
and the boundaries of the blocks.
E.g.: "0000..007F; Basic Latin"
This line defines the block "Basic Latin" to include all letters with a
code that is greater or equal 0000 and smaller or equal 007F.
Loading Unicode Tables
Once we have the two files "allkeys.txt" and "Blocks.txt" we can go
ahead and load them into the application. The Load Unicode Table
function is available in the "File" menu and in the Toolbar (). Click on the icon in the
toolbar and choose the "allkeys.txt" file in the appearing file dialog.
When this function is used, the application checks if the directory of
the "allkeys.txt" contains a "Blocks.txt" and loads this, too.
When the load operations finished, the Blocklist should be populated
with blocks and the Tableview should display all letters from the
"allkeys.txt" file.
Loading Block Tables
You may want to load only a block table, e.g. when it is not in the same
directory as the "allkeys.txt", or to replace the current blocks. Use
the Load Block Table function for this. It will clear the currently
loaded blocks and load the blocks from the file you choose. It is
available in the File menu and in the toolbar ().
Browsing through the Tables
We can now browse the loaded tables.
Selecting Blocks
In the Blocklist you can select single or multiple blocks. The letters
of the selected blocks will be displayed in the Tableview. To select a
block just left click on it. To select additional blocks, hold Ctrl and
click the blocks you want to add to your selection. To select a range of
blocks, you can select one block, hold down Shift and then select
another block. Notice that a tooltip for a block occures, when you
position your mousecursor over the name of a block, displaying the range
of codepoints of the block. You can change the order of the blocks in
the Blocklist over the menu: "View →SortBlocks".
Getting Details about Letters
The letters in the Tableview can be selected, too. When you select a
single letter, the Detailsbar below the Tableview will display the line
of the Unicode table, that defines the letter. You can check the
checkbox "UTF-8" to get another Detailsbar with the code of the letter
in UTF-8. When you select multiple letters in the Tableview ( using
Shift and Ctrl like in the Blocklist ), the Detailbars will display the
range of codepoints of the selected letters.
Another way to get some information about a letter, is to hold down the
right mousebutton when the cursor is over a letter. A small information
window will show up, containing a bigger version of the letter, the
version of the table, and the block the letter belongs to.
Changing the Appearance of the Tableview
The toolbar provides some options for changing the appearance of the
Tableview.
You can change the font, the fontsize and if the font letters are
displayed italic or bold:
It is also possible to change just the size of the cells in the
Tableview:
The left icon enlarges the cells, the right one makes them smaller
again.
In the top right corner of the table you find three input elements for sorting the
table according to one of the three attributes of each glyph:
With the drop down combo box you can select the attribute that is used for sorting.
The little button with the arrow defines the sort order (ascending or descending).
The button "sort" triggers the actual sorting of the current table.
If you change the contents of the table, e.g. by selecting another block, the new
table is not sorted automatically. You can use this behavior, to restore the original
sorting order.
Different Backgroundcolors
If one of the follow conditions is given, the background color of a letter is changed.