find unicode characters

[Sunlite]

I inserted the html entity & zwj ; in one of my ebooks to join ellipses with the word before them.

The entity was converted to its unicode equivalent.

That far everything is fine.

Now I want to search for the zwj character, but have no idea how to do that.

I tried copying the character, but that does not work. Not from the editor itself and not from the character table of Windows.

I tried to enter some representation of the character in the find field, but it never found anything.

What is the correct form of entering a unicode character in the find field?

Would it be possible to enter the html entity in the find field and serch for the character as well?

[kovidgoyal]

The zero width joiner is not handled well by Qt, since it is not displayed, you need to be a little careful when copying it. But copy pasting it into the find field from the editor should work fine. I tested it and it works for me.

[Sunlite]

Even after some more testing, I could not get the zwj character copied.

Only way I found I could find the character, is using it's hexa-decimal value as written in pythod code, combined with a regex search.

In the case of the zwj that is find =\u200d and search method = regex

[kovidgoyal]

Ah you are trying to copy the single character alone, that is very difficult if not impossible. I was refering to copying a word that contains a zwj within it.

For a single character you are better off using the unicode escape and a regex search, as you discovered.

[mrmikel]

The descriptions of this character tend to show it as 200D, and searching for it as \200D doesn't work, whereas searching for it as \u200d does.

Any chance eventually you could add the unicode for these characters next to the description in the lower right to make searching for them easier?

[kovidgoyal]

There are very few characters that cannot be copy pasted directly. Basically the non-printing ones. like zwj zwnj and shy. For every other character, just copy paste it. Dedicating UI space just for a few, rarely used characters doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

There are very few characters that cannot be copy pasted directly. Basically the non-printing ones. like zwj zwnj and shy. For every other character, just copy paste it. Dedicating UI space just for a few, rarely used characters doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me.

Did you look at the way Sigil handled this (the Omega button)? Works, takes little space when not used or can be thrown onto another screen head if you have one

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by theducks

Did you look at the way Sigil handled this (the Omega button)? Works, takes little space when not used or can be thrown onto another screen head if you have one

I was talking about mrmikel's suggestion of displaying hte python unicode form in the status bar. A special character insert tool is on my todo list. Unlike Sigil's it will cover almost all of the entire unicode range. I find Sigil's character insert tool too limited.

[mrmikel]

It should be an interesting challenge so that the most used ones are on a first page, and less used on other pages, unless you can bring them all up at once.

Sigil is too limited, I agree 100%. It would be useful that it be capable of being a window so it can be behind or in front of the editing window.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

I was talking about mrmikel's suggestion of displaying hte python unicode form in the status bar. A special character insert tool is on my todo list. Unlike Sigil's it will cover almost all of the entire unicode range. I find Sigil's character insert tool too limited.

I agree that Sigils was Limited.
It would be nice if it had been customizable. I think I use (en_US) maybe 10 regularly and another 10 sometime.
Having to scroll thru a huge list (eg Windows Charmap) is a PITA
(a very simplified Clips, chart driven, rather than menu for 2-3 ucharsmax for our users that always use char pairs eg zws+x)

[kovidgoyal]

It will work like this http://rishida.net/scripts/uniview/

and in addition it will allow you to mark some characters as "Favorites" which will then be easily accessible on the first page.

[theducks]

Thanks for the link Kovid

I will have to wait and see if the different way grows on me

[mrmikel]

I think that will work well. If there is one thing that is clear on MR, it is that there are many different workflows and preferences, so having a favorites will be very helpful.