AC&CP 2.22b installer download (530kb) AC&CP 2.22b no-installer download (300kb) AC&CP 2.22b source code download (90kb) PBP components and shared files (256kb) (needed to compile all PBP utilities) (Last updated 18/06/04) Comparable (or better) products in this category

What it does What it doesn't Version history Software specifications Copyrights & trademarks

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Notable features

NEW: Built-in full-featured reference browser. Maintain virtually unlimited character references within a click and a keypress of the main dialog. NEW: Six-way screen capture utility. Grab the large preview character, the complete character chart, or any selected area of the screen as a bitmap and saves it to disk or copy it to the clipboard, all with three mouse clicks or a press of the hotkey. NEW: Optional display of visible characters only or the full 256-character ASCII character set. Switch between display options to gain more character "real estate", discover "hidden symbols" in some fonts or learn about keyboard equivalents. NEW: Drag-and-drop browsing/previewing of uninstalled fonts. Drag any uninstalled font onto the character map dialog and if it's not installed, you'll still see its character set. Ideal for instant screen capture of dingbats using large-character previewing. Optional Charmap.exe-like behavior gives you the "pop-up preview", arrow-key and keypress navigation, copy-to-clipboard using the Enter key, and RTF-formatted copy-to-clipboard from its right-click menu. Resizeable large preview option for browsing clip art and dingbat fonts in reasonable sizes. On-demand dynamic font resizing...fit the font size to the dialog size, or manually adjust the font size to taste. Even remove the gridlines on the map for a cleaner appearance.

This applet isn't just an "improved Charmap.exe". It's the ultimate Windows character map. It's a must-have utility for any Windows professional, and it keeps getting better. Make no mistake...it's not a full-fledged font viewer (but it's close...just drag an uninstalled font onto it at any time for an instant preview), and if you're a DTP specialist you might miss one or two of its limitations (e.g. no Unicode tables), but we canvassed the Internet for something better, and we couldn't find anything close to this level of quality and versatility. There simply isn't anything like AC&CP anywhere, and until you begin to use it, you can't know how handy you'll find it.
We did find one potentially more useful implementation...a character map designed with full Unicode support for displaying characters beyond the "256-character ASCII limit". If this is what you need, you'll find it at http://www.bjondi.com.

If you're a writer, HTML author, developer or just an everyday hacker tired of the chronic feature lacks in Charmap.exe, then AC&CP is sure to earn a spot on your desktop for a long time to come. How do we know? Because we use AC&CP ourselves...every day...on every one of our PCs. It's so useful that we estimate the time it's saved us nearly half of the total time we've spent in developing the tool over the last two years.
(All screen shots made using a generic Windows 98 theme and color scheme)

This "loaded" view gives an idea of the features packed inside what looks on the surface like a
pretty simple, featureless applet. What it doesn't show you is how stingy AC&CP is on your
system resources, or more than a tiny fraction of the real power "under the hood".
See below for a picture of how compact and unobtrusive it can get without compromising
the slightest bit of power and flexibility.

Exceptionally efficient use of screen space with virtually all vital functions tucked into a single right-click context menu, and fully configurable display for optimal value-per-pixel. Copy-to-clipboard of seven different character or string formats: ASCII (plaintext), both types of HTML entities ("named" and ISO-8879-1 characters), hexadecimal equivalent, decimal equivalent, and binary format, and a slightly refined version of the preformatted RTF offered by Charmap.exe. Quick-select any installed font by name or select and display any available system font in any available style...not limited to TrueType and system fonts. The only tool of its kind known to support on-demand font smoothing Expertly-authored Macintosh-style balloon help for all controls gets you up and running in seconds...no need for a helpfile. Fast launching with a minimal system footprint. Standardized design minimizes distraction, decreases your learning curve to near-zero, and reduces Windows resource consumption to the absolute minimum. And it cleans up after itself like no comparably-featured tool on the market. All options except your registration license key are saved to a non-intrusive Windows INI file, not your precious registry. Runs just as comfortably on a 100MHz dinosaur notebook as on the fastest new PCs. Controllable from mouse or keyboard...select a character with a click or the arrow keys, press Enter or double-click to add selected character to the string editor or copy to the clipboard. Three extensive, integrated character charts for HTML characters, the full ASCII character set, and virtual keycodes for programmers and scripters. Fully resizeable dialog with support for all font sizes...suitable for everything from text fonts to clip art fonts...the "size-large" preview character expands to full-screen if needed, and disappears when it isn't. Six different key/character value readouts: binary, hex, scancode, HTML character entity, decimal and "Alt-key". Any or all can be hidden to fit the information you need in the horizontal space you want. Built-in support for on-demand use as the default Windows Charmap.exe for applications that call it...instantly replace or restore your current Charmap.exe. Unique customization options...optional Close-on-Escape, modify interface and "reference card browser" fonts, even change the name of the application...all the boring extras you've seen dozens of times in our programs and wonder why more developers don't use in theirs.

The applet is essentially nine tools in one:

• an ASCII character map
• an HTML character entity assistant
• a keyboard scancode readout
• a fast, flexible screen capture utility
• an instant drag-and-drop uninstalled-font sampler
• a handy fully-configurable character table reference
• a full-featured text editor/scrap collector
• a full-character-set font browser
• a multi-format character display

The interface is designed for raw efficiency (screen shot below shows the "stripped-down" interface) and delicious comfort (see screen shot above). It's got all the bells and whistles you could want from a tool of this type, but it also knows that "plain and unobtrusive" can sometimes be valuable traits.

You can reduce and refine the interface to nothing but the generic dialog shown at right, or leave it in its default state to display the rich readout and option set shown above. It contains built-in Mac-style balloon hinting, and beginning with version 2, a complete Windows helpfile to help you discover and unlock its full power.

Shown here in 256-character view with "Charmap.exe-like" behavior
enabled, this gives an idea of how unobtrusive and compact it can be
when all you need is something to paste the odd high-ASCII character.
And of course, all the right-click menu options are still there.

As with all Plain Brown Power utilities, this tool has its limitations. Most of the known limitations in ASCII Chart & Character Picker are voluntary and deliberate. If there's a limitation here that significantly affects your decision about whether this tool deserves a permanent place in your toolkit, by all means let us know.

• Scancode support is incomplete due to the difficulty in fetching a full set of possible keys from Windows without the use of a low-level system extension. We felt that using such an extension, which would have to wire directly into the operating system, was beyond the scope of AC&CP, and would unnecessarily increase complexity and decrease reliability.
• Unicode support: Only ASCII characters to #255 are supported. No support for additional Unicode character pages is offered at this time; this feature will be added as Unicode character page support becomes more important in the day-to-day use of Windows.
• Display anomalies: Due to limitations in window state priority maintenance and the complexity of dealing with stay-on-top windows, the main window may fail to remain on top after some dialogs are opened or after other applications are accessed. This is a non-addressable problem, and can only be temporarily corrected by disabling and re-enabling stay-on-top options.
• DirectX modes: DirectX video modes are not supported by the screen capture utility.
• Uninstall support: Any copy of the utility set to act as the system default Character Map will be invisible to the program's uninstaller. Uninstallation and restoration of the original Character Map can still be done after this program's uninstaller has been run by following the steps in the troubleshooting guide
• Font browser/uninstalled font preview: Installed fonts of all types are browsable in the character map. Only TrueType fonts can be dragged-and-dropped onto the character map for instant previewing.

Configurability is every bit as important as featureset in a tool of this type. Enough said.

Package title	ASCII Chart and Character Picker
Version	2.22b
Download file size	530kb
Installer/uninstaller
Source code available	Yes
Win31/NT3.51-compatible	No longer supported
Win95/98/ME/XP-compatible
WinNT4/W2K/XP Pro-compatible
Copyright/distribution status	Donationware

ASCII Chart and Character Picker is copyright ©1998-2002 Cub Lea. This software may not be redistributed except by the publisher or an exclusive licensee. Neither the archive, the installation, nor any files contained in the original archive as posted by the publisher may be modified in any fashion except where otherwise specified.

Trademarks? Are you kidding? I purposely chose the simplest, most generic names we could think of for Plain Brown Power software products. I'm a professional myself, and I don't believe that fancy names or expensive trademarks add a thing to the work environment. I've yet to meet a professional who did believe that...who wasn't a marketer or salesperson.

Posting and non-Internet publication permissions

Please do not post this software on other websites. The posting of a short-term release with problems which have since been fixed reflects badly on everyone, and that includes you as the host.

If you wish to link directly to the download archive, then don't even ask...you can't. Bypassing the license page is strictly forbidden.

CD/DVD publishers are not permitted to include this software on magazine disks, shareware CDs, etc. Since there is no simple way to do this and still retain my protection against unwanted legal action, I can't allow this software to be redistributed in any other way but on this site through the license pages.

Here's a small collection of links to related products and resources we recommend if our tools don't meet your needs. If our software can't solve your problems, then it's quite likely one of these links will provide what you need.