MadCat Help

Overview

The implementation of Unicode standards in MadCat allows for the ability to search for and display non-roman scripts and diacritics. An increasing number of records in MadCat now display both the romanized and vernacular form of a title. Note: The Mozilla Firefox browser is best for viewing non-roman characters. If you are using a Mac, Safari is the recommended browser. Jump to top

Searching with Non-Roman Characters

To input non-roman scripts or Western characters with diacritics, you must first install the relevant input keyboard layouts.

For computers running Windows, use the following path (note that the tab/toolbar names on your computer may differ somewhat based on the version of Windows you are running):

1. My Computer --> Control Panel --> Regional and Language Options
2. Click the Languages tab and select the desired keyboard layout(s)

To input Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, see the Microsoft Global Input Method Editors (IMEs) Web page for more information about the Global IMEs and how they work. Also see A Quick and Dirty Guide to Installing and Using East Asian Languages under Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP.

 

The following illustrates a MadCat search for a Chinese title:

 

If you are unable to find the title you are looking for, try searching for both the vernacular version and the romanized version of the title. Use the Keyword Boolean search, and place your terms within quotation marks, as shown with the Japanese title below:

 

For information on transliterating non-roman scripts, see the ALA-LC Romanization Tables.

 

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Displaying Non-Roman Characters

Many languages will display correctly without the need to change your browser settings. To view MadCat records with all diacritics and special characters, and records in their original scripts (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) select the Latin-based font Arial Unicode MS by following the directions below. Note that the font may need to be installed; it is called Universal Font on the installation disk.

For computers running Windows, with Internet Explorer as the browser, use the following path (note that the tab/toolbar names on your computer may differ somewhat based on the version of Windows you are running):

1. From the Tools menu at the top of the browser, select Internet Options
2. Click the Fonts button
3. Select Latin Based as the language script and Arial Unicode MS as the Web page font

For computers running Windows, with Firefox as the browser, you may need to use the following path (note that the tab/toolbar names on your computer may differ somewhat based on the version of Windows you are running):

1. From the View menu at the top of the browser, select Character Encoding
2. Select Unicode (UTF 8)

When viewing a MadCat record, the romanized title will appear first in the display. The non-romanized characters will display below it, as in the following example:

 

Note: Internet Explorer replaces Cyrillic ligatures with boxes. Firefox correctly displays the ligatures. To correctly display ligatures with IE, use the following path:

1. From the Tools menu, select Internet Options
2. Click the Accessibility button
3. Check Ignore Font Styles specified on Web pages
4. Click the Fonts button
5. Select Arial Unicode MS
6. From the View menu, select Encoding
7. Select Unicode (UTF 8)

For more information about displaying Unicode characters, particularly if you are having problems, see the Unicode Consortium Web site.

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