Community
    • Login

    "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?)

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Help wanted · · · – – – · · ·
    19 Posts 4 Posters 2.0k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • Alan KilbornA
      Alan Kilborn @Ekopalypse
      last edited by

      I realized I could have added more info to my original post:

      The character I manually added to my macro was this one:
      ⟯
      which looks like a right-parens but is actually this:
      https://graphemica.com/⟯

      When I put it into shortcuts.xml I just pasted it as a single character, but now I notice that it looks like this if I open the xml:

      ⟯

      This all makes sense as the xml is UTF-8; I just wanted to add the info to the thread.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • guy038G
        guy038
        last edited by guy038

        Hi, @alan-kilborn,

        Many thanks for pointing us to  https://graphemica.com   ! Really, this site gives a ton of information on each character ;-))

        Just for information :

        https://graphemica.com                     =>  SEARCH of a SPECIFIC Unicode character
        
        https://graphemica.com/characters          =>  List of Unicode CHARACTERS by NAME
        
        https://graphemica.com/categories          =>  List of Unicode GENERAL_CATOGORIES
        
        https://graphemica.com/blocks              =>  List of Unicode BLOCKS
        
        https://graphemica.com/scripts             =>  List of Unicode SCRIPTS
        
        https://graphemica.com/unicode/characters  =>  List of Unicode CHARACTERS per PAGE of 256 chars
        
        
        INPUT Examples :
        
        Char       =>  Character ITSELF
        
        
        &10180
                   =>  CHOICE between character U+10180 and character U+27C4  =  U + Hex(10180)
        #10180
        
        
        10180
                   =>  Character U+10180 ( GREEK FIVE OBOLS SIGN )
        &#x10180
        
        
        &#10180    =>  Character U+27C4 = U + Hex(10180)  ( OPEN SUPERSET )
        

        Cheers,

        guy038

        Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Alan KilbornA
          Alan Kilborn @guy038
          last edited by

          @guy038 said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

          Many thanks for pointing us to  https://graphemica.com   ! Really, this site gives a ton of information on each character

          It was a site previously unknown to me.
          Glad you enjoyed it.
          BTW, I found it because I googled E29FAF after finding that Notepad++ had converted my entry of the UTF-8 character to these codes – my quickest way to explain the “more info” I wanted to provide in my previous post.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • Alan KilbornA
            Alan Kilborn @Ekopalypse
            last edited by Alan Kilborn

            @Ekopalypse said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

            I know you have access to the find result window, did you try to read the current encoding?

            My investigation down this path:

            # Get the code page used to interpret the bytes of the document as characters.
            get int GetCodePage=2137(,)
            

            Calling that function on the Find result window results in a 65001 being returned.

            Looking in scintilla.h I see:

            #define SC_CP_UTF8 65001
            

            So it does appear that the encoding for the Find result window is UTF-8.

            Which makes me wonder even more why my UTF-8 character doesn’t show up correctly there.

            EkopalypseE 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • EkopalypseE
              Ekopalypse @Alan Kilborn
              last edited by

              @Alan-Kilborn

              The other usual suspects would be the font and technology (GDI/DirectX).
              By the way, which font do you use?
              None of my installed fonts show this symbol in the editor.

              Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Alan KilbornA
                Alan Kilborn @Ekopalypse
                last edited by

                @Ekopalypse said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

                The other usual suspects would be the font and technology (GDI/DirectX).
                By the way, which font do you use?

                I have direct-write enabled.
                I play around with different fonts (can’t seem to find the best–for me); “Consolas” is the one currently in favor for me.

                None of my installed fonts show this symbol in the editor.

                You mean this actual character?:

                ⟯

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • EkopalypseE
                  Ekopalypse
                  last edited by Ekopalypse

                  @Alan-Kilborn said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

                  You mean this actual character?:

                  I guess so, even my browser refuses to display it

                  ed4eb222-dd59-4c3f-8a40-c5eeef40f798-image.png

                  But more I think about it, the less I’m convinced that it is a font or technology issue as you do get a representation - just a different one.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Alan KilbornA
                    Alan Kilborn @Ekopalypse
                    last edited by

                    @Ekopalypse said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

                    What I hope npp does is

                    • read the content from the document and convert it to utf16
                    • search for the string in utf16 as well
                    • display the search result in whatever encoding is needs to do

                    When I noticed the following in the Scintilla documentation, it reminded me of Eko’s points above:

                    SCI_ENCODEDFROMUTF8(const char *utf8, char *encoded) → position
                    SCI_ENCODEDFROMUTF8 converts a UTF-8 string into the document’s encoding which is useful for taking the results of a find dialog, for example, and receiving a string of bytes that can be searched for in the document.

                    I’m not sure what I’m saying by pointing this out; perhaps just noticing a somewhat common theme? :-)

                    EkopalypseE 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • EkopalypseE
                      Ekopalypse @Alan Kilborn
                      last edited by

                      @Alan-Kilborn

                      since the Windows API uses utf16 for internal storage of strings, this does not sound efficient.
                      I wonder why the scintilla devs thought that this might be a good idea.
                      Hmm … most likely because the library is used on different platforms,
                      but then why not have a compile time variable to convert it to utf16 on Windows and utf8 on Linux … ??

                      Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • Alan KilbornA
                        Alan Kilborn @Ekopalypse
                        last edited by

                        @Ekopalypse

                        In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned SCI_ENCODEDFROMUTF8 as I did a search of the Notepad++ source code, and it isn’t used there.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • Alan KilbornA
                          Alan Kilborn
                          last edited by

                          @Alan-Kilborn said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

                          When I put it into shortcuts.xml I just pasted it as a single character, but now I notice that it looks like this if I open the xml:
                          ⟯

                          So just providing some more data on this, after I experimented with it a bit more:

                          I see that if I record a macro using the multibyte unicode character (discussed much further up in the thread), instead of “hand editing” shortcuts.xml after-the-fact, when I run the macro I DO see the correct character appearing in the Find result window:

                          fb3060bd-84e4-42c4-bff1-a4b1f40ee59d-image.png
                          AND…

                          if I later look at the saved xml, I see this for that character in the macro:

                          ⟯

                          Which does indeed make sense.

                          So perhaps the error was mine and it comes down to directly inserting the unicode character into the XML instead of inserting its &#x.... code.

                          Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • Alan KilbornA
                            Alan Kilborn @Alan Kilborn
                            last edited by

                            More thoughts:

                            From my immediately preceding post, it follows that anytime a “special” character is used in a N++ configuration xml file, the “html syntax”, example &#27EF should be used, rather than inserting the character “directly”, for example via a paste.

                            However, I notice in english_customizable.xml the following, which does not follow this idea:

                            <Item id="1721" name="▲"/>
                            <Item id="1723" name="▼ Find Next"/>
                            

                            But yet these items display correctly…
                            Okay, different usage from the above; these appear on buttons in the UI, the earlier discussion is some text in the Find result window…

                            But in general, I would be interest to know why these don’t require any special “treatment” in the xml.
                            Or what is the “rule”?
                            Always use the “html syntax” seems the “safest”.

                            Ideas? Or is the topic too “meh” for anyone to care? :-)

                            PeterJonesP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • PeterJonesP
                              PeterJones @Alan Kilborn
                              last edited by

                              @Alan-Kilborn said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

                              Always use the “html syntax” seems the “safest”.
                              Ideas? Or is the topic too “meh” for anyone to care? :-)

                              I don’t know enough about XML to know the default encoding, but my guess is Windows-1251.
                              If you added

                              <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
                              

                              at the beginning of the shortcuts.xml (and reloaded Notepad++), does that allow you to hand-insert the https://graphemica.com/⟯ or other special character into the macro XML directly?

                              Alan KilbornA 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • Alan KilbornA
                                Alan Kilborn @PeterJones
                                last edited by

                                @PeterJones said in "Special characters" in Search Results window (encoding issues?):

                                If you added

                                First, I’m a bit surprised that after adding that line manually, that Notepad++ allows it to remain (after recording a new macro, forcing N++ to rewrite shortcuts.xml).

                                Second, it was a good idea, but sadly, after trying it, I get the same result as earlier, specifically, “garbage” characters in the Find result window text.

                                Third, thanks for the interest, @PeterJones

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • First post
                                  Last post
                                The Community of users of the Notepad++ text editor.
                                Powered by NodeBB | Contributors