MyCharacters 1.00

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Little John
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MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

//edit 2022-06-25: Version 1.00 final released

Image
When writing, you often need special characters that are not available on the computer keyboard. Searching for these characters in an extensive character table each time is cumbersome and time-consuming. Since it is mostly the same special characters over and over again, it is helpful to create a personal collection that allows you to insert these characters quickly and easily into any text processing program. This is the purpose of MyCharacters.
One entry can contain several characters. This is very convenient for characters that occur in pairs, such as quotation marks. So the program can not only store the characters themselves, but also their proper combination and order.
In the rare cases when special characters are needed that are not in your own collection, you can conveniently access an extensive character table of your choice.
MyCharacters is a 64-bit program for Windows. It has been tested on Windows 7, 10 and 11.
The program currently supports English and German. Please feel free to translate it into other languages.
You can download a portable version and a setup version from my website:
https://luethje.eu/prog/index.htm

Any constructive feedback is appreciated.
Last edited by Little John on Sat Jun 25, 2022 9:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Thorsten1867
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Thorsten1867 »

A pop-up menu for delete and add would be great.
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Little John
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

Thorsten1867 wrote: Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:37 pm A pop-up menu for delete and add would be great.
There are items for delete and add in the main menu of the program.
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by jacdelad »

Hi Little John,
yesterday mk-soft postet a nice "hack" to show how to realize a fake progressbar within a ListIconGadget by using UTF8-characters. This led me to write a small program to explore the UTF8 character set, which let me find a lot of interesting characters abusable for other uses.
However, maybe you could consider integrating some "UTF8-Explorer" to explore and find the whole UTF8-Set.
Also I would like to suggest to create a preview with enlarged characters (I can barely see the ones coming predefined), maybe also different fonts and a preview how they look when you put two or three of them next to each other (that way I found out which characters looked best for the progressbar). This is what I would add.
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

@jacdelad:
Thanks for your reply. However, your suggestions go beyond the purpose of this program.
I think a program such as e.g. Babelmap does what you want. I have no intention to re-invent such a program.
The purpose of this small tool is not to explore characters, but to provide quick and convenient access to known characters that are frequently used.
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by jacdelad »

Aye thanks for the answer. I'll have a look at Babelmap or do it myself. Anyway, keep going!
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by deeproot »

@Little John

Very nice, works fine on my Win7 system - keep going with it :)

It is addressing the same kind of issue as my own small desktop utility, Extra Keys. However, your approach is completely different and very interesting - I can imagine situations where it could be really useful.

A while ago I found a number of different tools that did similar things - all had various pros-and-cons. Like yourself my program was written for specific purposes and not intended to replace other ways of doing related functions. I'm perfectly happy with that. It was originally in VB6 but converted to PB many years ago. It's closed source as it's related to my much larger commercial project but the code is mostly pretty simple. https://www.deeproot.co.uk/extrakeys.html
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by deeproot »

Just a suggestion - - in the startup examples the Smiley character is not displayed in the window because it's not in the font. Inevitably this might also happen for some other Unicode characters. As expected the program action still works if the target application has a suitable font.

I also had this problem so I embedded a suitable font in the exe file - - see: https://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?p=455020. I made a custom font derived from Deja Vu, with a wide Unicode range and free license.
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

Hello deeproot,

many thanks for your comprehensive replies! They are very useful to me.

Thank you also for testing on Windows 7, which I don't have the opportunity to do.
Your tool “Extra Keys” was obviously written with a lot of thought and care, and it is well documented.
This made me realize what could be improved in the documentation of my program ( done :-) ).

Despite the different approaches, the underlying problems are the same. I was aware of the font problem, but I didn't have a solution for it. Embedding a font in the EXE file is a great idea – I didn't even know it was possible. I'll probably do that in a future version of my program ... provided I'll be able to do so. :|
Thanks again for your valuable information!
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

Version 1.00 beta 2 released.

Changes:
  • New method to insert the characters into the target application.
  • Sample character list slightly changed.
  • Documentation improved.
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

Version 1.00 final released.

Changes:
  • Added images to some items of the main menu. :-)
  • Setup program slightly enhanced.
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Re: MyCharacters 1.00

Post by Little John »

A French language file is now available for download on my website.
Un grand merci au traducteur!
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