BabelMap (Unicode Character Map for Windows)

All screenshots of BabelMap on babelstone.co.uk are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA-3.0) by Andrew West.

Overview

BabelMap is a free character map application for Windows that allows you to browse through the entire Unicode character repertoire of over 110,000 characters, or search for a particular character by name or by code point. Characters can then be copied to the clipboard for use in any Unicode-aware application. It also provides many useful features and special utilities, as described below. BabelMap supports the most recent version of the Unicode Standard, currently Unicode 6.2 (released September 2012).

Summary of Features

General Features

• Unicode Character Grid showing all 110,182 assigned characters and 137,468 private use characters in Unicode 6.2.
• Browse the entire Unicode character repertoire using either a single font or a user-defined virtual composite font which maps particular Unicode blocks to particular fonts (you may save and load different composite font mappings).
• Browse through Unicode Character Grid by plane, block or page of 128 characters.
• For CJK Unified Ideographs blocks, browse by radical.
• Select any Unicode block from a dropdown list.
• Find a character by its hexadecimal or decimal code point value.
• Search (backwards and forwards through the Unicode Character Grid) for characters by full or partial name.
• Paste a character into the edit buffer and hit F2 to locate it in the Unicode Character Grid (for a string of text, put the caret in front of the character to locate).
• Magnify any character in the Unicode Character Grid by right-clicking on it.
• Select characters from the character grid into an edit buffer that supports drag-and-drop editing.
• Display text in the edit buffer using either a single selected font or the user-defined virtual composite font.
• View characters in the edit buffer as Unicode characters or as NCR or UCN escape sequences.
• Paste Unicode text from the clipboard into the edit buffer (any NCR or UCN escape codes will be automatically converted to Unicode characters).
• Copy selected characters to clipboard, for inserting into any Unicode application (text is copied as both plain Unicode text, as well as in RTF format for applications such as Word and WordPad that support rich text editing).
• Save the contents of the edit buffer to file in UTF-8, UTF-16 (Big or Little Endian) or UTF-32 (Big or Little Endian) encoding.
• Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean or Vietnamese readings displayed for currently selected CJK unified ideograph (choice of language to show is user selectable).
• Choice of two sizes of dialogue boxes available (small-sized dialogue boxes particularly suitable for 800×600 screen resolutions).
• Optional colour coding of characters according to a specified Unicode property (General Category, Canonical Combining Class, Bidi Class, Bidi Mirrored, Decomposition Type, Numeric Type), Script or Unicode Version.
• Open a Properties dialogue box for the selected character, which shows :
  • Version of Unicode in which the character was first introduced
  • Unicode properties for the character (including Name, Formal Alias, Unicode 1 Name, General Category, Canonical Combining Class, Bidi Class, Decomposition Type & Decomposition Mapping, Numeric Type & Numeric Value, Bidi Mirrored flag, Uppercase Mapping, Lowercase Mapping, Titlecase Mapping, and Line Breaking property)
  • Unicode Code Chart annotations for the character (general notes, aliases and cross-references)
  • All defined Standardized Variant and Ideographic Variant sequences for the character
  • Any CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) data for the character; currently Cantonese jyutpping, Mandarin pinyin, Korean "Yale" and Vietnamese quốc ngữ (or VIQR) readings are provided
• Open any uninstalled font files from file, for viewing in the current instance of BabelMap only.
• Bookmark up to 32 characters for quick access.

Utilities

BabelMap includes the following utilities that may be accessed from the menu or by means of function keys :

• Font Analysis Utility : lists all Unicode blocks covered by a particular font or lists all fonts that cover a particular Unicode block.
• Font Information Utility : provides information about the currently selected font.
• Font Glyph Export Utility : export any or all glyphs from any font to file in BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG format.
• Font Coverage Utility : List all fonts that cover a particular character or all the characters in a piece of text or all the characters in the BabelMap edit buffer.
• Advanced Character Search Utility : lists all characters that meet specified criteria.
• UCD Data Utility : generates UCD-format data for a given range of characters for any version of Unicode.
• Character History Utility : enumerates the UCD properties for a given character for all versions of Unicode, including mappings to Unicode 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 where appropriate.
• Han Radical Lookup Utility : lists all Han ideographs with a given radical and number of strokes (covers all 74,617 characters in the CJK, CJK-A, CJK-B, CJK-C and CJK-D blocks).
• Mandarin Pinyin Lookup Utility : lists all Han ideographs with a given Mandarin pinyin pronunciation.
• Cantonese Jyutping Lookup Utility : lists all Han ideographs with a given Cantonese jyutping pronunciation.
• Yi Radical Lookup Utility : lists all Yi syllables with a given radical and number of strokes.
• Unicode Version History Utility : provides a summary of the repertoire of each version of Unicode from 1.0 onwards.

Download

BabelMap Version 6.2.0.3 (supports Unicode 6.2.0) [2012-10-21]

For an overview of the new features in BabelMap version 6.1.0.x and 6.2.0.x, please see the BabelStone Blog.

BabelMap is distributed as a single executable (no installer). Simply download the zipped file, and then unzip the file BabelMap.exe to the desired location on your computer.

• BabelMap.zip (for Windows 2000*, XP, Vista and 7) [2.36 MiB]

* BabelMap requires GDI+ (gdiplus.dll), which may not be installed on systems running Windows 2000; if this is the case you may download it directly from Microsoft (here), and copy the file gdiplus.dll to the same location that BabelMap.exe is run from.

BabelMap is free and fully functional for personal or commercial use, but you are welcome to make a small donation via PayPal to help support its continued development if you wish ($5 or equivalent suggested).

A portable version of BabelMap is also available for free download from PortableApps.com.

Support

Feature requests, bug reports and general questions or comments about BabelMap or BabelPad may be made at the BabelStone forum or directly to me by email.

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