User's Manual

BrailleNote Apex BT User Guide
7-195
7.20 Extended Characters.
The text characters represented, in the standard 63 dot combination Braille set, or for that matter on
the typical QWERTY keyboard, only represent a tiny proportion of the total characters available.
These include currency indicators like pounds and Euros, accented letters like e acute and c cedilla,
character sets for other languages such as Arabic and Japanese and a whole range of specialist
characters for use in sciences, math, phonetics etc. totaling around 35,000. Those characters not
represented in your standard character set are referred to as the extended character set.
As a way of managing this enormous character set, a standard called Unicode exists. Unicode
assigns a unique numeric code to every character. This allows for use in coding and programming,
formatting, and an easy way to enter characters once you know the character code. For more
information on Unicode Tables, have a look at www.unicode.org.
Extended characters are useful in a wide range of situations.
For studying languages, economics, math, just about any subject with its own symbols or
characters.
For commercial use, inserting copyright or trademark symbols etc.
For everyday use of words borrowed from other languages, people and place names,
correspondence with friends.
You may use certain characters frequently, or just occasionally, and there are various ways you can
set up your use of characters depending on the level of usage.
Use of extended characters is not confined to documents. You may also use them in e-mail
addresses, file names, and within the address list etc.
7.20.1 Inserting Extended Characters.
Unicode characters only work in text documents. If you wish to use an extended character in a
Grade 2 document, you will need to change to computer Braille.
There are three different ways of inserting an extended character. These methods are suitable for
different levels of use:
Searching and selecting the character from the Unicode tables For the first or only time you
look up a character and if you don't know its code, you will need to do this to search for it.
There are two methods of doing this detailed later in this section.
Typing in the character code This is quick and easy for characters you use occasionally and
can remember the code for.
Setting up a key combination assigning a dot combination to the character. This is a good way
to manage frequently used characters.