Wstawianie symboli do tekstu

Text editors and other programmes that enable entering text (e.g. image programmes) have sets of fonts. As you may notice, some fonts do not enable writing in Polish since they do not include letters which can be found only in the Polish alphabet. They are letters containing the so called diacritics (diacritical marks), i.e marks used in alphabets and other writing systems which are added to a letter. change its articulation, and therefore create a new letter.

In the Polish language there are nine letters created with the use of diacritics: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż. They are the so called diacritic charactersdiacritic charactersdiacritic characters, letters containing diacritics.

The text which is displayed on the screen is actually stored as numerical values in a text file. The computer converts numerical values to displayed characters. This is performed with the use of a specific coding standardcoding standardcoding standard.

A coding standardcoding standardcoding standard is a numbering system that assigns a numerical value to every character. Particular languages contain various sets of characters, therefore there are many different coding standards. In order to standardise these differences, the Unicode standard has been created, which contains characters of numerous alphabets. It includes most characters of all languages used the most commonly by computer users.

A problem in former years was also the encoding of Polish letters used in computer systems. Both Polish and international standards were developed, and in consequence many unoficial norms were used, which was impractical and caused many problems. It was not until 1990s that the Unicode standard (UTF encoding) was introduced, which solved these problems for various languages containing national diacritic charactersdiacritic charactersdiacritic characters.

The most common keyboard layoutkeyboard layoutkeyboard layout used on computers in Poland is the so called the ‘programmer’s keybord’. It enables entering Polish diacritic charactersdiacritic charactersdiacritic characters by using the right‑hand ALT key with a corresponding similar letter from the Latin alphabet. For instance, to access ‘ń’, you must use thekey combinationkey combinationkey combination ALT + N. The only exception is ‘ź’, which as accessed by pressing the key combination ALT + X. An alternative solution, however rarely used, is the ‘Polish’ keyboard.

Character Mapcharacter mapCharacter Map is a program built into Windows that enables viewing the characters that are available in a selected font.

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Zrzut z ekranu przedstawia formatką Character map. Na górze z lista rozwijana Font, a obrazku wybrany Arial. Obok przycisk Help. Centralną i największą przestrzeń zajmuje tablica ze znakami (10 wierszy po 20 znaków). Znajdują się tu znaki specjalne np. !, ”, #, $, %, &, ‘, (, ); cyfry od 0 do 9, wielkie i małe litery ułożone alfabetycznie, od a do z – bez polskich znaków oraz znaki diakrytyczne dla różnych języków, w tym również polskiego. W tablicy zaznaczony jest pierwszy znak – wykrzyknik. Na dole formatki znajduje się pole tekstowe Characters to copy i dwa przyciski: Select i Copy. Poniżej checkbox oznaczony Advance View. Na samym dole zapis w unikodzie wraz z opisem zaznaczonego znaku: U+0021: Exclamation Mark.

To enter a symbolsymbolsymbol

• place the text cursor where you want the symbol to be inserted,

• on the InsertinsertInsert tab, select Symbol,

• if the symbol you want to add is on the gallery, insert it,

• if not, select the More Symbols option to open the Symbol dialogue box,

• scroll the list of symbols of the chosen font up or down to find the symbol you need,

• use the Subset drop‑down list to find the symbol quicker,

• if you do not see the symbol listed on that gallery, change font,

• when you find the symbol you want, double‑click it or press the Insert button,

• close the Symbols dialogue box with the Close button.

SymbolsymbolSymbol, Webdings and Wingdings are fonts which contain many symbols.

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Zrzut z ekranu przedstawia formatką Symbol. Na górze znajdują się dwie listy rozwijane Font oraz Subset. Centralną i największą przestrzeń zajmuje tablica ze znakami (5 wierszy po 18 znaków). Są to znaki, których nie da się wpisać bezpośrednio za pomocą klawiatury, Np. ułamki zwykłe jedna trzecia, czy pięć szóstych, znaki walut: euro, funt brytyjski. Można tutaj znaleźć kolekcję strzałek skierowanych w dowolnym kierunku. Symbole matematyczne, np. pierwiastek, nieskończoność, suma, całka, znak różny od. Poniżej znajdują się symbole używane ostatnio – Recently used symbols. Niżej informacje na temat zaznaczonego symbolu – Unicode name. Wyświetlana jest jego nazwa (na rysunku Euro Sign), Character code (20AC) from (Unicode hex). Na dole formatki znajdują się dwa przyciski AutoCorrect... oraz Shortcut Key... Obok zapis skrótu klawiaturowego dotyczący zaznaczonego znaku: Shortcut Key: Alt+Ctrl+E

Inserting ASCII characters

Press and hold the ALT key and type the character code on the numeric keypad. Remember to add any leading zeroes in order to get a four‑digit code.

Inserting Unicode characters

Type the Unicode character code where you want to insertinsertinsert the Unicode symbolsymbolsymbol and then press ALT+X to convert the code to the symbol.

In most computer systems fonts are supported by the operating system and available in all programmes. Some applications have additional sets of fonts and their installation on the computer expands the set of available fonts.

Exercises

Exercise 2

Find in a text editor and give the codes of the following symbols:

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Ilustracja przedstawia symbole: buźka, paragraf, C, stopień, zbiór pusty, gwiazdka, strzałka, samolot.

Glossary

Keywords

diacritic charactersdiacritic charactersdiacritic characters

coding standardcoding standardcoding standard

symbolsymbolsymbol