How to show the special characters?

sadicus

How to show the special characters?
I’m not even sure if that’s whats neede, but not understanding what else is causing spaces between words.
in this case editing a “New Doc Sizes.psp” file.
When Photoshop reads the psp file, it displays correctly with no space.
In Text Edit, it displays with several spaces between the words.

a few examples: CardRack
displays as “Card_____Rack”
Instead of “CardRack”

file.psp
change to file.txt
make the necessary edits notepad++
save as file.psp

PeterJones

@sadicus said in How to show the special characters?:

How to show the special characters?

My guess is that View > Show Symbol > Show All Characters will show what you want (assuming that there are some control characters or zero-width spaces or some such).

sadicus

@PeterJones

ah yes, well it is difficult to see the grey symbol " –>"
on a dark grey background.
is there a way to change the color of the “Show Symbol” symbols? I thought they might highlight in red or some color.
~ Thank you

Terry R

@sadicus said in How to show the special characters?:

I’m not even sure if that’s whats neede, but not understanding what else is causing spaces between words.
in this case editing a “New Doc Sizes.psp” file.
When Photoshop reads the psp file, it displays correctly with no space.
In Text Edit, it displays with several spaces between the words.

Given it is a Photoshop file and has the extension PSP I would suggest you are doing the wrong thing by opening in Notepad++. Changing an extension from file.psp to file.txt in no ways changes the file’s contents, so that step is irrelevant.

Doing a Google search it appears there are many types of PSP files, mostly are binary (image). However there is also one which is a Photoshop preferences file. I think it is this type of file you are opening. Whilst it does seem to be text based, given you are seeing spaces where Photoshop shows none suggests to me that this file is structured so Photoshop knows where the settings are. Editing it in another application such as Notepad++ will very likely end in disaster (I think).

You haven’t actually mentioned why you feel the need to open this PSP file in Notepad++, apart from this idea that some spaces aren’t supposed to be there. If Photoshop isn’t having a problem with the file, leave it.

Terry

PeterJones

@sadicus said in How to show the special characters?:

is there a way to change the color of the “Show Symbol” symbols?

Yes, though it depends on which type of symbol it is. In the Settings > Style Configurator, go to Language: Global Styles (documented in Online User Manual here).

The following entries in the Style: column will change various of the “Show Symbol” symbols

White space symbol [foreground only] ⇒ If View > Show Symbol settings have whitespace shown, then the tabs and whitespace symbols will use this foreground color.
EOL Custom Color [background and foreground] ⇒ Sets the colors for the CR, LF, and CRLF indicators, which are also influenced by the Settings > Preferences > Editing > EOL settings. The “Go to settings” link will take you to Preferences > Editing so you can change EOL settings.
NPC Custom Color [background and foreground] ⇒ Sets the colors for the symbols for the Non-Printing Characters, which are also influenced by the Settings > Preferences > Editing > Non-Printing Characters settings. The “Go to settings” link will take you to Preferences > Editing so you can change Non-Printing Characters settings.

the grey symbol " –>"

That is presumably the TAB character symbol, which is affected by White space symbol setting.

sadicus

thank you both.
It’s just a way to sort the preset list. It cannot be done directly in the app.

mkupper

@sadicus said in How to show the special characters?:

How to show the special characters?
I’m not even sure if that’s whats neede, but not understanding what else is causing spaces between words.
in this case editing a “New Doc Sizes.psp” file.
When Photoshop reads the psp file, it displays correctly with no space.
In Text Edit, it displays with several spaces between the words.

If the goal is to sort the list of settings then sort and save the file (make a backup first). If Photoshop is happy with your sorted file then you are done. The exact nature of the spaces would remain a mystery.

If you want to know what those spaces are then I think it would help if you were to copy paste the lines for CardRack and MayaShelf into the forum thread as your reply. Put a line with three back ticks before your example lines another line with three back ticks afterwards like this:
``` txt
“Card Rack”, …
“Maya Shelf”, …
```

The problem is that while we can walk you through various ways to show special characters in Notepad++ the results will vary depending on what invisible characters you are dealing with. If you do the three back ticks thing as shown above then hopefully we all will be able to figure out what the invisible characters are and can provide better directions on what settings or features to use if you want those things that look like spaces to be clearer to you when looking at the file in Notepad++.