BabelMap

Let’s assume for a second that you are a web designer trying to create a website that needs to use non-ASCII characters. Unless you know languages such as Arabic, Chinese or Russian very well, you will need to spend a lot of time and energy making sure that the characters you are using are correct.

BabelMap is a tool that can a real difference in this case, as it enables you to browse through     the entire Unicode set to find the character you need.

Granted, the interface might seem rather packed and intimidating when you launch it the first time. However, if you take a closet look, you will discover that it’s really not that difficult to work with and provides various tools to simplify your queries. In fact, you can browse through the entire Unicode library block by block and character by character using various filters or criteria.

A noteworthy feature is its ability to group the characters in ‘planes’, with the first one dubbed Basic Multilingual Plane having the most characters. You can view the characters in each group and switch between them with just one click. Moreover, the app features blanks spaces where you can add new characters in the future.

Once you find the one you require, you can copy it directly to clipboard or other apps that support Unicode. The program enables you to display all characters in a single font, or you can define a composite font, depending on your project.

BabelMap is a valuable tool for designers, developers, linguists and content creators, especially if their projects entail using non-ASCII or other characters that they are not familiar with. The program can prove invaluable when it comes to solving encoding issues or display problems that may appear on web pages.