# Character Palette Manual

## Introduction

### Character Palette

Character Palette

The Character Palette provides a convenient way to access characters that are not on your keyboard, such as accented characters, mathematical symbols, special symbols, and punctuation marks. You can insert characters from the applet into text strings, for example in text documents or at the command line. You can customise the contents of the applet to suit your requirements.

Character Palette supports the UTF-8 character encoding so you can use the palette to display or copy any Unicode character.

### To Add Character Palette to a Panel

To add Character Palette to a panel, perform the following steps:

1. Right-click on the panel.

2. Choose Add to Panel.

3. Scroll down the list of items in the Add to Panel dialogue, then select Character Palette.

4. Click Add.

## Getting Characters

When you add Character Palette to a panel for the first time, the application displays a default palette of characters. You can select a character from the default palette, or you can select a character from predefined palettes of characters. Each predefined palette of characters is associated with a standard character on your keyboard.

### To Select a Character

To select a character from the palette and insert the character into a text string, perform the following steps:

1. In the palette, click on the character that you require. The character button is pressed in to indicate that the character is selected.

2. Point to the location in an application where you want to put the character and middle-click to insert the character. You can also paste the character into the application if the application allows you to paste from the clipboard.

   You can repeat the insertion using middle-click as many times as you want until you either deselect the character or select text in another application. You can continue pasting the character from the clipboard until you either deselect the character or copy to the clipboard from another application.

To deselect the character, click it again or click another character.

Some applications may not allow you to paste certain characters.

### To Display a Predefined Palette of Characters

You can change the characters that are displayed in the application from the default palette to a predefined palette of characters. To display a palette of predefined characters, perform the following steps:

1. Click on the Available palettes button on the application, the down arrow on the left.

2. Click on the palette that you want to display.

You can select the character that you require from the palette of characters that is displayed in the application, then insert the character into your text string.

### Characters' Keys

The following chart lists keyboard characters and their associated groups of characters. The keyboard characters are listed in the first column of each section in the chart. The character groups that are associated with each keyboard character are shown in the other columns.

#### Character Groups Associated With Keyboard Keys

Shows character groups associated with various keyboard keys.

## Customising Character Palette

### Character Palette Preferences

Character Palette Preferences

### Configuring Palettes

To configure Character Palette, right-click on the applet, then choose Preferences. The Character Palette Preferences dialogue contains the Palettes list box, which lists the palettes that are available from the applet. To close the Character Palette Preferences dialogue, click Close.

- To add a new palette to the applet, click on the Add button. See charpick-default-new for more information.

- To delete a palette from the applet, select the palette, then click on the Delete button.

- To modify a palette, select the palette, then click on the Edit button. Modify the palette in the Edit Palette dialogue, then click OK.

### Setting Up a New Palette of Characters

You can use a character selection application such as Character Map to set up a new palette of characters. For example, to create a new palette with Character Map, perform the following steps:

1. Right-click on the applet, then choose Preferences. The Character Palette Preferences dialogue is displayed.

2. Click on the Add button and the Add Palette dialogue is displayed.

3. Open Character Map, then select the characters that you want to display in the new palette. You can select up to 25 characters.

4. Copy the contents of the Text to copy text box from Character Map to the Palette text box in the Add Palette window.

5. Click OK.

Character Palette adds the new palette of characters to the list of available palettes.