Character picker

The character picker is a method of character input. It provides a way for proofreaders to enter all the characters that are valid for a project, and is most useful for providing a way to insert characters that might not be on your keyboard.

If the character picker does not contain the character(s) you've found in the book, and there are no instructions in the Project Comments on how to handle them, you can ask the book's Project Manager to add the character by posting in the project thread for that book (project). For example, a proofreader may find that there is a bit of Greek text in an English book, but the Greek character set has not yet been added.

How does it work?

You are in the proofreading interface when you are working on a page. At the bottom is the Proofreading Toolbox, which contains assorted tools that can be used when working on the page. On the far left side of the Proofreading Toolbox is an arrow, which can be used to hide or show the character picker.

The Picker Set Menu is a row of buttons with various characters in them. For most of our projects, it looks like this:

Each button selects a picker set. When you hover the pointer over a button, the name of the picker set is displayed. When you select a picker set, all the characters in that set will be displayed below in two rows.

When you move the pointer over a picker, an enlarged version of the character will be displayed at the side, and if you hover over the picker, the full Unicode name of the character will be displayed. This can be helpful to identify the correct character.

When you click on a specific picker, the character it represents will be inserted at the location of the cursor in the text.

MRU stands for Most Recently Used. Clicking on it gives a list of the characters you've previously selected from the character picker in that project.