Show no-break space

[Pohli]

Hello,

is there any way to show no-break spaces (U+00A0)?

[Claudia Frank]

@Pohli

anything within View->Show Symbols?

Cheers
Claudia

[guy038]

Hi, Pohli,

The NO-BREAK SPACE character ( of Unicode code-point 00A0 ) is just displayed as the usual SPACE character and, unfortunately, cannot be visualized, with a specific glyph, when using the option View > Show Symbol

To see the interest of the the NO-BREAK SPACE :

• Choose the option View > Show Symbol > Show all characters

• Choose the option View > Word wrap

• Type any text, which continues on the next line

• Now, select the last SPACE character ( very small orange dot ! )

• Replace it by a NO-BREAK SPACE ( ALT + 0,1,6,0 on the Numeric keypad )

=> Immediately, the last word, of the first line, is moved at beginning of the second one. Logical, as the two words, before and after the NO-BREAK SPACE character, are, from now on, considered as a single orthographic entity !

Of course, for searching any NO-BREAK SPACE, just type \xa0, in the Find dialog.

But a nice and easy way to visualize all the NO-BREAK SPACE characters, of a text, would be to select one of them and, then, use the menu option Search > Mark All > Using 1st style to Using 5th style. ( I specially like the default colour of the fourth style ! )

Best Regards,

guy038

[Pohli]

@guy038 said:

Of course, for searching any NO-BREAK SPACE, just type \xa0, in the Find dialog.

But a nice and easy way to visualize all the NO-BREAK SPACE characters, of a text, would be to select one of them and, then, use the menu option Search > Mark All > Using 1st style to Using 5th style. ( I specially like the default colour of the fourth style ! )

That’s a good workaround for me, thanks alot!

Best regards,

Pohli

[PeterJones]

If you have PythonScript plugin installed (assuming UTF-8 or UTF-8-BOM encoding), go to the console and type:

editor.setRepresentation("\xC2\xA0"," NBSP ")

in the >>> line, and hit RUN. To undo,

editor.clearRepresentation("\xC2\xA0")

If anyone knows how to escape characters in the NPP_EXEC command line, the same could be done with it’s SCI_SENDMSG. Actually, what will happen if I copy/paste a true NBSP between the first set of quotes?

SCI_SENDMSG 2665 " " "NBSP"
SCI_SENDMSG 2667 " "

It works! (I won’t guarantee that the forum keeps the blank between the spaces as an NBSP; if not, you can type it like guy038 suggested)

(SCI_SETREPRESENTATION is 2665; SCI_CLEARREPRESENTATION is 2667; see here)

So, you can change the representation with either NPP Exec or PythonScript plugin.

[ThePirate42]

For convenience this is a NppExec script to toggle the alternative representation method of NBSPs suggested by PeterJones:

sci_sendmsg SCI_GETREPRESENTATION " " @""
if "$(MSG_LPARAM)" == "" then
  sci_sendmsg SCI_SETREPRESENTATION " " "NBSP"
else
  sci_sendmsg SCI_CLEARREPRESENTATION " "
endif
npp_setfocus sci

Remember to change all the spaces inside the

" "

parts into actual NBSPs, since the forum converts them in normal spaces.

[Alan Kilborn]

For those interested, there’s a PythonScript way of doing this sort of thing, HERE.