Character sets

Understand the support for character sets in Adobe FrameMaker.

FrameMaker supports the Unicode Character Set and uses UTF-8 encoding to provide Unicode support. For information about Unicode character sets, see www.unicode.org.

When working with a FrameMaker document, you can insert characters in different languages by using the Input Method Editor (IME) of the relevant language. To insert a specific character you can use:

• Character palette utility (Select File > Utilities > Character palette)
• Hex Input palette (Select File > Utilities > Hex Input)
• Windows Character Map utility (Select Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map)

If a character glyph is not available for the selected font, FrameMaker displays a question mark (?) in its place. However, because FrameMaker preserves the original code point, the glyph is displayed when you apply the correct font.

Because some special characters can no longer be represented by their character names in MIF documents, you must enter the UTF-8 code points of such characters. For more information, see the FrameMaker MIF Reference Guide or the FDK Programmer’s Guide.

FrameMaker uses code points below ‘\x20’ (referred to as control codes) for internal purpose. Control codes specify how the surrounding text is formatted.