And yet another brainstorming about making non-printable characters visible:
through named entities.
- Calibre does prefer the usage of unicode characters over named entities. But this case could be the exception to that general rule.
- I propose something like a "white-list" of named entities/"black-list" of their associated unicode characters. (Also fully customizable?)
- Then some options which could cause:
- Nothing. As Calibre currently beheaves. The default option.
- Warn me. Whenever a new editor window is opened an automatic search is launched against the black-list. And you get a warning. But nothing else is done.
- Automatically change when opening but revert on save. The black-listed unicode chars are automatically changed by entities. This procedure is reverted when saving. I mean that the epub/azw3 file on the HDD always contains unicode chars but the opened editor shows entities.
- Preserve entities. The same as above but entities are preserved when saving.
Of course this scheme needs some polishing and those white-listed entities would also affect other areas of the code, like the main named entities check or the automated change into Unicode when typing the ending ";" ... But I think the general idea is more or less clear.
As I said just brainstorming mode.