Unicode Explained

type 0196, and then release Alt. Upon releasing Alt, the character should appear on the

screen.

In MS Word, the method works only if Num Lock is set (by pressing the Num Lock

key in the numeric keypad).

Portable computers often lack a numeric keypad. They usually have a key combination

(explained in the manual) that makes some normal keys simulate a numeric keypad.

Typically, the same combination turns the situation back to normal.

This method is often referred to as Alt‑0nnn to emphasize that you normally type four

digits starting with zero, but we use the shorter notation Alt‑0n. It is quite possible to

use less than four digits when the number is small; for example, Alt-092 produces a \.

However, characters with such small code numbers can usually be typed more directly.

The codes are interpreted according to the Windows character code, which may vary

by country and language version as well as keyboard settings. In the Western world,

the code is normally windows-1252, also known as Windows Latin 1. This means, as

will be explained in Chapter 3, that code numbers 32–126 and 160–255 (decimal) are

the same as in Unicode. However, if you, for example, set your keyboard layout to

Russian, the meanings change: they refer to windows-1251 (Windows Cyrillic). Then,

for example, Alt-0169 still produces ©, since the copyright sign has the same position

in windows-1251 as in windows-1252, but Alt-0233 ...