MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Suggestion for Improving the "Insert Special Character" Feature

KevinH · 09-14-2026, 02:23 PM

Hi BeckyEBook,

Wow! Nicely done. It seems to work well with or without the characters.txt file in my Sigil Prefs.

A nitpick:

- The flow layout certainly holds more chars but the structure of chars is lost. In the original, we started with spaces as the first group, then the main set of html named entities in the next group, followed by Greek chars in the third group, and finally math symbols in the fourth group.

That structure made it much easier for me to find characters but it got lost when using characters.txt.

If we decide to go with an xml structure, perhaps we could add a group tag.

Something like:

Code:

<specialchars>
<chargroup label="Html Named Entities">
<char hex="2021" label="a short name" />
...
</chargroup>
...
</specialchars>

Then create a divider the forces things to a new line with that label somehow in the FlowLayout.

We should also provide a filter feature of some sort that filters the descriptions.

Thoughts?

09-14-2026, 02:23 PM	#37
KevinH Sigil Developer Posts: 10,110 Karma: 7640000 Join Date: Nov 2009 Device: many	Hi BeckyEBook, Wow! Nicely done. It seems to work well with or without the characters.txt file in my Sigil Prefs. A nitpick: - The flow layout certainly holds more chars but the structure of chars is lost. In the original, we started with spaces as the first group, then the main set of html named entities in the next group, followed by Greek chars in the third group, and finally math symbols in the fourth group. That structure made it much easier for me to find characters but it got lost when using characters.txt. If we decide to go with an xml structure, perhaps we could add a group tag. Something like: Code: <specialchars> <chargroup label="Html Named Entities"> <char hex="2021" label="a short name" /> ... </chargroup> ... </specialchars> Then create a divider the forces things to a new line with that label somehow in the FlowLayout. We should also provide a filter feature of some sort that filters the descriptions. Thoughts?