What is the difference between alt code and unicode (how to type)?

Question

from what i see, unicode also requires you to press the alt key, which is like the alt code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana

follow that link and scroll down to 'hiragana in unicode'. i asked this question before and i got some answers in full detail, but it didnt work. i tried pressing 'alt' and hold it down, followed by on the numeric pad and then the numbers. and i tried putting a 0(zero) before typing in the numbers. but what i got was alphabets with stuff above them.

question: how do i type in hiragana in unicode. and is unicode any different than alt code?

Answer 1

Unicode, in the sense you are talking about, is a character set intended eventually to cover all normal characters in every language. It is, so far as I know, the main character set in all current computer systems (except for some very small computers such as those in some cell phones).

See http://unicode.org/ .

Current Windows operating systems have three built in character sets active at any one time, the Unicode character set, an old style 8-bit DOS character set, and an old style 8-bit Windows character set.

What you are calling Alt Code is indeed different, not a character code at all, but a method of typing characters built into the Microsoft Windows operating system from the beginning, before Unicode existed. For users of European languages it covers only 256 characters because that is the maximum number of characters allowed in an old style 8-bit character set. You press the left Alt key while Num Lock is on, and while holding down that Alt key type a number on the numeric keypad.

If you don’t include a leading zero, the value returned is the character associated with that number in your current DOS character set. If you type a leading zero, the value returned is the character associated with that number in the 256 characters of your current non-Unicode Windows old-style 8-bit character set.

If you type a number higher than 256, that value wraps. Typing 257 is the same as typing 0, typing 258 is the same as typing 1, typing 259 is the same as typing 2, and so forth.

This has nothing WHATSOVEVER to do with Unicode. And there is no such thing as “Alt Code”.

Some applications have additional methods built in that allow you to enter Unicode characters. For example, in WordPad which comes with Windows, you can type the hex value of a Unicode character followed by ALT-X and the the hex number will be replaced by the corresponding Unicode character. Thus FF followed by an ALT-X becomes ÿ. In Microsoft Office applications you can use the Alt-Numeric keypad method to type in numbers greater than 0256 and the corresponding Unicode character will be returned. (This also works in Notepad.)

This means that in Microsoft Office and in NotePad you have access to all the Unicode characters through this method,. But this is not so in most applications. And you must type the decimal version of the number that corresponds to the Unicode hex value, not the hex value itself, and you must type it on the numeric keypad with Num Lock on. You can convert from hex to decimal using the Windows Power available free as part of the Microsoft Windows Power Toys. Search in Google for ["power calculator" "power toys"] and select a site which has a version that fits your version of Windows. Or you can use any Calculator application that supports conversion form hex to decimal.

But for typing Japanese I suggest instead that you use the method specified at https://www.msu.edu/~bellbri2/ime.html or at http://www.inter-locale.com/whitepaper/l... (This method also works with Vista). Then you won’t have to worry about the Alt key behaving differently in different applications. If you have trouble following the instructions here, just ask again on this site.

To make the ALT key behave more reasonably in almost every Windows program, I suggest the free Quick Unicode Input Tool from Cardbox. Download it from http://www.cardbox.com/quick.htm . This will allow you to enter any Unicode character in the base plane of Unicode in either decimal format or hex format. (For hex format you just precede the number with period on the numeric keypad.)