Support for Unicode is the main new feature of this version of Atlantis.

Unicode is a worldwide standard by which all symbols and characters from the world's languages can be encoded for use by computers. Before Unicode, computers could only process a limited range of different characters and languages. This was the case with traditional character-encoding standards such as the 8-bit ANSI standard. Unicode has no such limitations. With Unicode, computers can process a mix of technical, musical, or mathematical symbols, special characters used in publishing, as well as characters from all the languages of the world.

So now Atlantis can be used to view, create, or modify documents in most of the world’s languages, among which there are languages that could not be represented through the old 8-bit ANSI character codings. You can also use the Windows IME mechanism to type Far-East texts in Atlantis. IME stands for Input Method Editor. If you are not familiar with IME yet, please refer to the Windows documentation on installing and using IME. Note that IME is supported by Atlantis only under Windows 2000 and XP (or higher). You will not be able to type Far-East texts in Atlantis under Windows 95/98/ME.

So the first benefit of Unicode is better support for international texts. But even if you create documents exclusively in English or any other Western language, Unicode support will allow you to include all kind of new characters and symbols in your documents. The range of characters that can be included with Unicode fonts is almost limitless.

Most features of Atlantis like Insert Symbol, Find/Replace, AutoCorrect, Fields, Font and Document Previews, etc, are now Unicode-compatible. Again, note that support for Unicode in Windows 95/98/ME is minimal. You will have full Unicode support in Atlantis only under Windows 2000 and XP (or higher).

Because of Unicode support, the “Symbols” dialog of Atlantis has a new design. To bring it up, use the main menu (“Insert | Symbol…”), or click the dedicated toolbar button:

The first thing you will notice is a new “Subset” drop-down list in the top right corner:

You will pull down this list to display all the character subsets available for the font currently selected on the left:

Selecting a specific subset automatically brings the corresponding group of characters into view:

You can then double-click a character or symbol to insert it in the active document. You can also highlight a symbol and click “Insert”.

The scrollbar on the right can also be used to bring into view the various character map subsets:

But the character map can also be scrolled with the mouse wheel. Click the character map, then scroll the mouse wheel up or down.

There is one more way to navigate through the character map. You can click the character map, then use the cursor keys.

As you scroll through the character map, the numeric code of the highlighted character is automatically displayed in the “Symbol code” box below:

By default, the symbol codes are displayed with their traditional decimal coding. But if you are familiar with hexadecimal coding and you find it more convenient, you can activate it by clicking the “hexadecimal” radio button at the bottom of the dialog.

If you know the code of the symbol that you want to insert, you can click the “Symbol code” box and type the required code directly. The corresponding symbol will automatically be highlighted in the character map. Click “Insert”, or press the Enter key to insert the character at the current insertion point.

Most probably you will use a limited number of symbols more frequently than others. These can be added to a list of your “Favorite symbols”. To add a symbol to the “Favorite symbols” list, first click the symbol in the character map, then click the “Add to Favorite symbols” button (down arrow):

The highlighted symbol will be added to the gallery displayed under the main character map:

You can have as many Favorite symbols as you wish:

To insert a Favorite symbol in a document, just double-click it, or click once then click the Insert button.

To delete a symbol from the Favorite symbols gallery, click the symbol, then click the small cross button above the list of Favorite symbols:

Frequently used characters are inserted quickly and easily with the Favorite symbols gallery. But there are alternative ways to insert symbols in a fast way.

You can assign a specific hot key to each favorite symbol. For this, highlight the symbol either in the main character map or in the Favorite symbols gallery. Then click the “Change…” button next to the “Hot key” box:

A small dialog will pop up where you can specify a hot key for the highlighted symbol:

When a hot key is assigned to a symbol, the symbol can be inserted directly in the document window without bringing up the Symbols dialog. You only have to remember which hot key to press to insert which symbol.

There is one more way to insert symbols quickly. If you know the Unicode numeric code of a symbol (either the decimal or hexadecimal code), you can insert it in this way:

1)  Activate the “Num Lock” mode of your keyboard (press the Num Lock key if the Num Lock indicator is not highlighted on your keyboard).

2)  Press and hold the Alt key down.

3)  Type the required decimal code on the numeric pad (for example, type 8721 to insert the mathematical sign for sum: ∑).
 
If you want to type a hexadecimal code, type “X” first, then type the code itself (to insert the same mathematical sign for sum, you’d have to type “X2211”).
Of course, the letter “X” and any letter A to F belonging to the hexadecimal number being inserted have to be typed from the main section of the keyboard. Obviously, the numeric pad cannot be used to type letters.

4)  Release the Alt key.

Atlantis will check if the current document font includes the required symbol and insert it.

If the current font does not include that symbol, Atlantis will automatically apply any other appropriate font available on your Windows system.

In a similar way you can insert symbols by typing their old ASCII codes. For this type "0" before the ASCII code itself. For example, to insert the "Per Mile" sign (‰) whose ASCII code is 137, do the following:

1)  Activate the “Num Lock” mode of your keyboard (press the Num Lock key if the Num Lock indicator is not highlighted on your keyboard).

2)  Press and hold the Alt key down.

3)  Type 0137 on the numeric pad (do not forget to type 0 before the ASCII code 137).

4)  Release the Alt key.

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