A verry useful tip for Mac users. There is a free utility available for Win machines that does something similar, though not the character maths. I'll post the link later.

-----Original Message----- From: David Sewell Date: 2/9/04 14:58 To: TEI-L@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU Subj: Useful Unicode tool in Mac OS X

I just discovered a great and somewhat hidden feature of the OS X Calculator application: it does Unicode display and "math". That is, you can display any Unicode character that your system fonts can display by entering its numeric value, and you can display characters that are plus or minus any offset you want by doing addition or subtraction. It's a useful thing to have if you're working with an XML document containing numeric character entities and you want to know what they represent.

To access this, go to "View - Display Format - Unicode" from the menu. If you had a numeric value in the previous display, it will be replaced by the equivalent Unicode character. You can display different characters by hitting the Clear button and then entering a new value. (The display will update each time you enter a numeral, since the calculator has no way of knowing whether you're going to enter a 2-digit, 3-digit, 4-digit or whatever value.) You can do Unicode math by hitting the + or - button and entering a value; the display will update to the appropriate offset from the character in the display.

This works for hexadecimal, too, if you start out with the hex calculator.

David

-- David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager Electronic Imprint, The University of Virginia Press PO Box 400318, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4318 USA Courier: 310 Old Ivy Way, Suite 302, Charlottesville VA 22903 Email: dsewell@virginia.edu Tel: +1 434 924 9973 Web: http://www.ei.virginia.edu/