Comprehensive List of Characters

Thanks to the advent of Unicode This is a form of character set used in newer systems containing well in excess of 40,000 characters. Early Windows systems were limited to 256 characters in any one character set., and to extensive development work by Duxbury Systems, there is a long list of characters supported by DBT. For the sake of this discussion, we divide characters into four groups.

1. The most common characters needed to produce literary text (generally found on your computer keyboard).
2. Characters needed to produce text that may not be on your keyboard: accented letters, or non-Roman scripts such as Cyrillic, Arabic, Tamil, or Korean, etc.
3. Characters needed to produce mathematics or technical material.
4. Characters that may be needed for their graphical content.

For virtually all users, creating text is not difficult. Using Windows Region and Language Settings (especially the Keyboard Settings), you can have Windows - and especially Microsoft Word - use your preferences for entering text. It is very easy to enter text, save it as a Microsoft Word file, and then import the completed Word file into Duxbury DBT.

What if you do not want to change your keyboard system but need to enter a small number of unusual characters into your text? You can do this in either Microsoft Word or in DBT.

When handling technical characters, be aware that you may want to use a mathematics editing program such as MathType to help you. Duxbury DBT can import files created by MathType.

We should mention that while Unicode is used throughout the world, DBT (which predates Unicode!) uses its own internal system for enumerating unusual characters. This system is called DUSCI. If you want to enter a special character into Microsoft Word, you need to know the Unicode number. If you want to enter a special character directly into DBT, you need the DUSCI number.

Entering Raw Unicode into Microsoft Word

In Word, you can enter a character that is not on your keyboard by typing in the 4-digit ("hexadecimal") code for the character (its Unicode value). Immediately afterward press Alt+X, and Word replaces the 4 digits with the actual Unicode character. If you repeat the command at the same position, the effect is reversed. So, this command can be used both to learn the Unicode number for a character and to input a Unicode character.

Entering Raw DUSCI into Duxbury DBT

In DBT, to enter a special character, press Ctrl+] (that is, hold down the Ctrl key and press the right bracket key, "]"). In the dialog box which appears, enter the DUSCI 4-digit code. Like Unicode, DUSCI is written in hexadecimal digits. So, if you want to put the Devanagari "AA" character into your document, its DUSCI code is D+C036. Press Ctrl+] for the dialog box and enter C036. To enter this same character into Microsoft Word, you would use the Unicode number: 0906.

Clipboarding Into DBT does not Work for Special Characters

You should never cut and paste special characters into DBT because this action loses the benefit of the character conversion done during file import. If you need to clipboard some material, clipboard it into Microsoft Word, and then import the Word file into DBT.

Chinese - and other Han - Characters

DBT does not display traditional Chinese ideogram characters. Instead DBT displays an appropriate substitute alphabet based on the language: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, or Korean - the "Han" group of language scripts. Normally, the language is selected automatically just by selecting the DBT template for importing the file. At need, the automatic selection can be overridden by forcing the language choice in the Global: Import Options dialog, but in almost all cases, letting the template select the language is what you want.

These are the choices for how Han characters are imported into DBT:

Korean Hangul Characters

Hangul often compacts 2 or 3 characters into a single symbol. When DBT imports a file, the process is reversed, DBT breaks a single Hangul character into its component parts. In technical terms, all Hangul characters in the range from U+AC00 through U+D7AF are redirected into Hangul Jamo characters in the U+11xx range. DBT uses a mono-spaced font to display those characters. The result can be difficult to read and is certainly jarring to those who are accustomed to reading conventional inkprint Hangul. In this case, it is best to do all editing in Microsoft Word, using DBT as the translation engine and for output.

Arabic and Hebrew Characters

Both Arabic and Hebrew inkprint are written from right to left. DBT displays the inkprint Arabic and Hebrew text from right to left as well. However, the DBT editing cursor does not (as yet) accommodate the right to left flow within a line.

For these scripts, it is best to do all editing in Microsoft Word, using DBT solely as the translation engine and output manager. In this case, if you need to, you can clipboard whole lines from Word into DBT as a way of making changes within a line.

Table of Unicode Ranges Supported by DUSCI Characters

Note for Screen Reader Users: We are aware that lists of characters can be tedious to review. Likewise, screen reader users can experience some unexpected results when scanning the two tables below. These tables list ranges of Unicode characters.

In the first table, the first column identifies the character set, the second column gives the start of the Unicode range for that set, and the third column indicates the use of that character set. The possible uses are: for a language, for mathematics, for symbols, or for the International Phonetic Alphabet. The entries in the second column are also hyperlinks to tables, each showing the full Unicode range for the character set and the DUSCI equivalent for each Unicode character.

Table of All Unicode Ranges U+0000-U+FFFF

The second table lists all of the 4-digit Unicode ranges.

The first column gives the start and end of each range. The second column identifies the character set or use of that range. Most of these entries are hyperlinks. Note that these are external hyperlinks (i.e. to pages on the World Wide Web, not to pages in DBT Help).

If the last column is blank, then there is no support for these characters in Duxbury DBT. If the last column is "Word™ import", it means that these characters are supported by conversion into other Duxbury supported characters during import. If the last column is "DUSCI supported" then that Unicode range is in the previous table.