Suggestion for Improving the "Insert Special Character" Feature

[Turtle91]

I wonder how large the complete listing actually is - as in file size??? If it is just 1-2kb then I’m not sure if that is really concerning. I’ve had html files filled with thousands of characters that barely impacted the overall file size. I have had to go searching for characters 15-20 times over the years, but I imagine other languages/genres might require that much more often.

[KevinH]

And all 3 OS's already have tools/utilities to handle this. So this is pure duplication.
Its only purpose is for convenience for common special chars so it should never be large, but maybe it should be a bit customizable. That is what we are trying to figure out.

[rjwse@aol.com]

There is also CSS/xhtml. In calibre's editor you can make snippets to repeat any-which-kind of favorite. I had this preference of an extra-large exclamation mark, one that descends below the line and is also at the same right-leaning angle as the ending double-quote.

[KevinH]

Yes, this is Sigil and Sigil calls them clips. So yes clips work too.

[KevinH]

I have attached 4 images that talk about how to find and generate any unicode character using only OS based tools. Please check them out below.

Given these, should we simply be replacing Insert Special Characters in Sigil with a simple custom only user specified list of 128 or 256? Or maybe removing it entirely?

The days of people really needing Sigil's Insert Special Character at all may have come and gone.

Thoughts?

[philja]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Given these, should we simply be replacing Insert Special Characters in Sigil with a simple custom only user specified list of 128 or 256? Or maybe removing it entirely?

The days of people really needing Sigil's Insert Special Character at all may have come and gone.

Thoughts?

No - don't throw it away. Having the existing tool within Sigil is very handy and fast. I use it quite often, but I don't have any reason to stuff lots more characters into it.

[DiapDealer]

I just don't understand how it's any handier or faster than having a shortcut to the inherent OS character utility (not that I'm advocating for the complete removal of Sigil's Insert Special Character dialog). Can someone explain it to me?

[elibrarian]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I just don't understand how it's any handier or faster than having a shortcut to the inherent OS character utility (not that I'm advocating for the complete removal of Sigil's Insert Special Character dialog). Can someone explain it to me?

Only that the built-in dialog inserts characters directly into the active document, while all known external tools AFAIK copies the selected character(s) into memory and thus requires the user to insert it (CTRL+V on Windows). Not a big deal, but still an extra keystroke.

(I do not advocate the removal of the Sigil Built-in utility. Personally I wouldn't need neither 128, 256 or 512 configurable characters – 16 would be practical – like in LibreOffice's Special Characters configurable "preferred"-line – but in no way indispensable.)

Regards,

Kim

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by elibrarian

Only that the built-in dialog inserts characters directly into the active document, while all known external tools AFAIK copies the selected character(s) into memory and thus requires the user to insert it (CTRL+V on Windows). Not a big deal, but still an extra keystroke.

Fair enough. But keeping the Sigil insert dialog open and ready for direct insertion requires downsizing Sigil's main window, or having a second monitor available to park it on, in order to gain that advantage. Otherwise I need to open/close the Sigil insert dialog each time on my one monitor setup. Whereas I can just minimize the OS inherent character utility and keep all the real estate for Sigil's main window.

[Turtle91]

Wellllll. To use windows built-in character map I have to open the command window (or run window) and type in “charmap”. Then I have to use the select/copy/paste method elibrarian mentioned. An alternative is to use the emoji window (WIN-.) windows plus the period… but that window isn’t quite as useful as the charmap. You could make a shortcut to run the charmap window, but that seems like a lot more work than just pushing the button in Sigil.

I seem to remember Sigil had a much more robust special character function, but it was intentionally replaced with this streamlined version at some point. I’m sure there were good reasons for the change.

[KevinH]

No. In fact this version was actually expanded to include more special chars not less. At least since DiapDealer and I took over. So you are misremembering, or confusing Sigil with something else. Checked Sigil 0.6.2 release done in 2012 to verify that.

We added math symbols, to the complete set of html named entities, and then a few ligatures as well.

[KevinH]

It sounds like everyone wants to at least keep what we have now.

But some want to add customization at low level ( < 64 chars?) and some want to greatly expand the list to basically duplicate things every OS already supports.

Given clips can be used, an open browser window can be used, an OS utility can be used, an open word doc of chars can be used, what else is truly needed?

I personally never even try to lookup a special char in real time, I just type in a unique all cap placeholder, something like _RHO so my typing and thinking does not slow down.

Then I use a search and replace at the end with the proper replacement. Hell I also do that for words I can never remember how to spell, abbreviations for character names, and for any long word. That is just a habit I got unto since I was never a fast or accurate typist.

So there are many ways to handle this.

But expanding it to a long full unicode list is just not one of the options that I would consider adopting. Launching an OS utility with a shortcut, just seems to be too easy to do.

So lets focus on how to improve Insert Special Char that will help the majority of users without impacting total size or memory footprint too much.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Wellllll. To use windows built-in character map I have to open the command window (or run window) and type in “charmap”. Then I have to use the select/copy/paste method elibrarian mentioned.

Not sure why you have to go to all that trouble. I've simply pinned charmap to the taskbar. Why would anyone run it from a command window or search for it each time?

[byword]

I didn't expect this feature to cause such a controversy. While I am the one who proposed it, it is true that I suggested it merely to reduce a minor inconvenience. It would be nice (and a bit more convenient) to have, but it is completely fine without it.

Windows is indeed a bit more inconvenient compared to other operating systems. Still, it really just comes down to the minor hassle of copying and pasting. Oh, and searching is also a bit inconvenient on Windows.

But, I only need to look up special characters in about one out of every ten books I work on, so it's not something I do very frequently.

After reading other people's comments, I don't think there is a need to add a feature that isn't necessary on other OSs just for a small number of users.

I have clearly realized something this time. Sigil is a program used by many people, and the way I use it can be quite different from how others do. The developers of Sigil must really put a lot of thought into their work.

[jugaor]

Originally Posted by KevinH

So lets focus on how to improve Insert Special Char that will help the majority of users without impacting total size or memory footprint too much.

If it doesn't require too much work, I would suggest adding a section to sigil_v6.ini with the current list:

[insert_special_character]
list={nbsp}, {enbsp}, {emsp}, {thinsp}, {shy}, {nnbsp}, \‘, \’, \“, \”, <, >, «, », \', \", \,, …

Anyone who is satisfied with the current list (likely the majority) won’t change anything and will continue happily as before.
But users who need to change, add, or remove something (perhaps depending on the language or project they’re working on) will be able to modify the list directly there.
If they need to reset it, they can simply delete the line; Sigil will restore the initial (hardcoded) list and repopulate that line.

(A variation—if you wanted to make it more visible—would be to create a new .ini file (like prettyprint.xml), but I don't think it's worth the effort…)

Thank you.