Feature Request: Insert Special Characters menu

[Herbert123]

I work a lot with text in PhotoLine for presentations, print layouts, covers, GUI design, and so on.

One thing that I keep running into is inserting special characters: EN dash, EM dash, EM space, EN space, bullets, ellipses, and so forth.

For example, I use EN and EM dashes ALL THE TIME. But every single time I have to go online and copy these from this page: https://www.scribbr.com/language-rules/dashes/
(this just happens to be the page that opens in my browser when I search for EN dash). And then I copy and paste these in my texts.

That, of course, is silly. I should be able to do this in PhotoLine, and ideally standard shortcut keys should be assigned.

I'd like to request a simple addition to PhotoLine's text menu:



I would love to have these options in PhotoLine. (not necessarily with the same shortcut keys, btw). It would save an enormous amount of time when dealing with text and ensuring proper typography. And this wouldn't take much time to implement, as far as I can tell.

[shijan]

Maybe it is simpler to create Character Viewer panel, something similar that available in macOS by default? And sure, it is nice to have an option to assign shortcuts for characters in that panel.
From other side, Menu is nice because it is easier to add required items to toolbar and assign shortcuts...

P.S. Herbert123, i see at your screenshots and wonder why don't you update icons pack? I made huge amount of improvements and add missing icons specially for new versions of PhotoLine and specially for Windows users.

[Herbert123]

Maybe it is simpler to create Character Viewer panel, something similar that available in macOS by default? And sure, it is nice to have an option to assign shortcuts for characters in that panel.
From other side, Menu is nice because it is easier to add required items to toolbar and assign shortcuts...

P.S. Herbert123, i see at your screenshots and wonder why don't you update icons pack? I made huge amount of improvements and add missing icons specially for new versions of PhotoLine and specially for Windows users.

Perhaps, but with actual text formatting it tends to be a limited number of characters that pop up often. It's basic typography, really. There must be some kind of fast way to enter a specific dash or quote.

PS I keep putting it off, because I am just too busy with other things. Will check it out over the weekend, though.
Thanks! I love your icons.

[Hoogo]

If you have the unicode, you could use Alt+Numpad to enter that number, like ALT+161 for the inverse exclamation mark. Window's Charmap can help, but BabelStone has some nice tools (Bebelmap, Babelpad, Babelmap online) that I prefer for this purpose. Also, once upon a time, I had a keyboard tool that could turn inputs into other keystrokes, for any program.

[Gerhard Huber]

You know that you can use Text Shortcuts to create often used special characters?

[Herbert123]

You know that you can use Text Shortcuts to create often used special characters?

Yes, I am aware of that function - which can be very handy. Yet not useful in this case:

There is already a definition for "" --> „“, but I hardly ever type the quotes like that, and often have to edit existing text as well. And what if I change my mind and I want single quotes instead? Replacing becomes a chore with Text Shortcuts!

I would argue it is even MORE work than simply copying and pasting a quote from an external source: delete the double quotes, place cursor at the start of the word, type the shortcut followed by a space, delete the space, select the second single quote, cut, move cursor to end of word, paste. So much effort just to insert two single quotes?

Currently I have a text box that I copy from another PLD file that includes all these characters. I copy and paste from that text box. Not the greatest nor most efficient solution...

In any case some kind of solution is required in my opinion. Text Shortcuts can come in handy, just not in this particular context.

[JanH]

If you have the unicode, you could use Alt+Numpad to enter that number, like ALT+161 for the inverse exclamation mark. Window's Charmap can help, but BabelStone has some nice tools (Bebelmap, Babelpad, Babelmap online) that I prefer for this purpose. Also, once upon a time, I had a keyboard tool that could turn inputs into other keystrokes, for any program.

Assuming we're talking about Windows, there's also Window's built-in Emoji picker (?, or whatever it's officially called, included since some version of Windows 10, press "WIN + ."), which also includes a section for all sorts of typographical symbols, including at least En- and Em-dashes. (It's true that it doesn't cover the more exotic things like non-breaking hyphens and fractional spaces, though.)

[Gerhard Huber]

I have thought about your request.
Your first suggestion about the menu seems too limited to me.
Different people want different characters, so the menu would overflow.
That's why I looked at how other programs do it.
Most of them have a glyph list.
However, this also seems very limited to me, as it hinders the writing flow considerably if you have to keep reaching for the mouse to select a character while writing - similar to your solution with a document with characters.
I therefore see no alternative to the existing solution with the text abbreviations.
Of course, you have to define the individual abbreviations yourself and use abbreviations that do not interfere with your workflow.

[Herbert123]

The main reason why other design apps like InDesign, Affinity, etc. have those limited number of characters is because those are used most. I use EN and EM dashes, as well as curly quotes, all the time when editing and adding text. So do other people who care about their typography.

But what about this solution: allow for the text shortcuts to be called with a custom shortcut key. Those shortcut keys would only become active when: (a) the Text Shortcuts are active, and (b) the user is editing text.

This way the custom shortcut keys would not get in the way of PhotoLine's general shortcut keys, and it would allow anyone to create custom text shortcuts that can be called quickly.

It would also prevent an overflowing menu, and Text Shortcuts could be made to work with or without shortcut keys.
If no shortcut is set up, it continues to behave as it does now. If a shortcut key is assigned, however, the user will have manual control over inserting those special characters.

You could take this one step further later, and introduce presets (which that window is missing now, btw) for different languages and purposes.

Everyone happy!

[Herbert123]

...and it becomes possible then to control other typographical features quite easily as well. Such as inserting ligatures manually, or specific old-style figures.