Special character input (both manually and via AutoHotkey)

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Marc
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Special character input (both manually and via AutoHotkey)

Unread post by Marc »

In the WYSIWYG editor, entering special characters via the keybord does not seem to work and longer :shock: Example: Holding the ALT key + typing 0150 on the numerical keyboard to enter an en-dash does not work any more. The special character does not appear but instead some strange things seem to happen to the XML code (looks like invisible characters or something alike). The same happens when you use an AutoHotkey script. In version 7 and before, this both worked perfectly well?! Can this be enabled again somehow? (Using the function to add symbols in Help & Manual is not really an onption to something like an AutoHotkey script, which can add special characters with a single keypress.)
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Tim Green
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Re: Special character input (both manually and via AutoHotkey)

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Marc,

This hasn't been reported yet. I'm asking our developers to have a look at it.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Green
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Re: Special character input (both manually and via AutoHotkey)

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Marc,

Update: This is an issue in the editor engine. We're working on it.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Re: Special character input (both manually and via AutoHotkey)

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Marc,

So, this turns out to be more complicated than you might expect at first glance. Some of the ALT codes processed by Microsoft programs to render familiar characters actually have nothing to do with those characters, and those are the characters causing your issues. For example, code 0150 is not actually an n-dash. It is the code for the special character “START OF GUARDED AREA”. The HM8 editor does actually insert this, but as the original special character. Notepad, Word and other MS programs translate it into n-dash.

Changing this quickly in the current version of the editor engine would be global and would result in some conflicts between ANSI and Unicode encodings. Instead, special handling is going to be implemented for all the characters in this class so that they produce the expected results again. In the meantime we recommend using the special characters menu in Write > Insert Object, where you can also assign keyboard shortcuts for a number of common characters.

Sorry for the temporary inconvenience, but this is important and we want to get it right. 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Green
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Re: Special character input (both manually and via AutoHotkey)

Unread post by Tim Green »

Update: This has been corrected in maintenance build 5448, now online:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/news/2020 ... 48-update/
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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