gucharmap /guwˈtʃaɹˌmæp/ [project page]

This web page is obsolete. Please visit http://live.gnome.org/Gucharmap.

gucharmap is a Unicode character map. It uses the gtk+ toolkit and runs on any platform that gtk+ supports.

news

Mon Mar 22 23:37:30 EST 2004

1.4.0 is released. Changes since 1.2.0:

• View by script as well as by Unicode block.
• New documentation in the following languages: de es fr it ja ko sv zh_CN zh_HK zh_TW
• English documentation improved and updated.
• Search modified to look in CJK ideograph definitions as well as character names. Search heuristic also improved in other areas.
• Bothersome gucharmap input method removed.
• Many user interface improvements.
• Much code reorganized.
• New and updated translations: ar az bn ca cs cy da de el en_CA en_GB es fa fi fr ga hi id it ja ko lt mn ms nl no pa pl pt pt_BR sk sq sr sr@Latn sv th uk zh_CN

Thu Nov 20 17:30:50 EST 2003

1.2.0 is released. Changes since 1.0.0:

• Help, by Chee Bin HOH.
• Add smarts to search dialog. Now you can enter a code point, or the character you want to jump to, as well as search by character name.
• Removed “Search/Code Point”. Use search dialog instead.
• Removed Back and Forward buttons since they were confusing and seldom used.
• New and updated translations: ca,fi,it,ta,uk,vi,wa.
• Other fixes. (Keith Packard, Mariano Suárez-Alvarez)

Wed Sep 10 16:11:00 EDT 2003

1.0.0 is released. There are no big changes in this release. A couple of bug fixes, and lots of updated translations. This is the version in GNOME 2.4.0.

Wed, 2 Jul 2003 05:48:16 +1000

It has been officially decided that gucharmap will be in the GNOME 2.4 desktop.

Tue Jun 10 23:43:28 EDT 2003

0.8.0 is released. Significant changes since 0.6.1:

• full character details are now in a textview in separate tab
• as a result of this, much of the View menu evaporates
• characters mentioned in the details tabs are clickable links; back and forward history for clicked-characters
• useful character information is shown in the status bar; this includes at a minimum the codepoint and character name; for CJK ideographs, the definition; usage notes if the character has any
• got rid of the U+xxxx page listings in the left pane, since they weren't very useful
• search and jump-to-codepoint dialogs are a bit nicer, work better
• got rid of Zoom Mode menu item; keyboard users can hold down Shift instead
• install “gnome-character-map” symlink to gucharmap (requested by the gcharmap maintainer)
• change “Char_map” menu to “_File”
• it says in the magnification window which font is actually being used to draw the character
• function names in the public API changed to start with “gucharmap_” prefix
• header files start with “gucharmap”; only need to #include <gucharmap/gucharmap.h>
• ./configure option not to generate gtk.immodules (mainly useful for distro package maintainers)
• accessibility fix: emit active-descendant-changed signal when selected cell changes (bug #112981, Padraig O'Briain)
• ignore keypresses with modifiers in the character table
• new and updated translations: cs de es it ja ko ms nl pt ru sv zh_CN zh_TW
• highlight the active unicode block in the character table
• bold and italic buttons in the font selection, instead of a list of styles

Old news elided.

download

Download gucharmap from GNOME ftp.

Or, you can check out the very latest version from cvs:

You can also browse the source with lxr.

screenshots

Updated Mon Jun 9 01:51:13 EDT 2003.

The highlighted blue part shows the full extent of the block selected in the left pane (“Combining Diacritical Marks”).

More information in the details tab. Those link-looking things do about what you'd expect. The Back and Forward buttons are for link-following history.

Hold down the right mouse button or the shift key to see the character magnified. Tells you what font is actually being used to draw the glyph.

Tries to be smart about what to tell you in the status bar.

You can see where the status bar information is coming from.

I followed a link. The Back button isn't greyed out anymore.

For CJK ideographs (Chinese characters), it shows the definition in the status bar.

features

• Can display information about each character:

  • Unicode code point
  • Unicode character name
  • Unicode category
  • Unicode canonical decomposition
  • UTF-8 encoding (e.g. 0xE2 0x86 0x90)
  • other representations useful to programmers

  For CJK ideographs (unless not compiled in):

  • definition
  • Mandarin pronunciation
  • Cantonese pronunciation
  • Tang pronunciation
  • Korean pronunciation
  • Japanese Kun pronunciation
  • Japanese On (“Sino-Japanese”) pronunciation

  All of this information comes from the Unicode standard.

• view in any font at any point size, switch among fonts quickly
• browse characters by Unicode block
• identify the first character from the clipboard or X selection
• copy strings of characters chosen from the table to the clipboard and X selection
• search for a character by name
• jump to a character by code point
• drag selection into the charmap to identify a character
• drag and drop out of the charmap
• magnify the active character
• see which font is actually being used to draw each character’s glyph
• the character map is a gtk+ widget, and can be used in other programs

links to stuff gucharmap uses

• gtk.org
• unicode.org
  • http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt
  • http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt (warning: large text file)
  • http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/NamesList.txt (warning: also a large text file)
  • http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Unihan.zip (warning: also a large file)

related programs

• Juliusz Chroboczek’s ucm
• the windows character map
• gcharmap/gnome-character-map
• kcharmap, the kde character map
• umap, “a Unicode clipboard filler”
• Unibook™ Character Browser
• Lord Pixel’s Unicode Font Info for Mac OS X
• UnicodeChecker for OS X

Also see Project UTF-8.

copyright

gucharmap is copyright © 2003 Noah Levitt <nlevitt columbia edu>

gucharmap is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

gucharmap is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.