[sharing]ASCII arrows snippets

[HC Haase]

HI

When I write by hand I often use a lot of arrows to show connections or as a kind of shorthand notation. When I later type that in my wiki, I like to still keep the arrows (so I can see my original thinking). Therefore, I have made some snippets for the editor menu with some ascii arrows and a few other useful non-keyboard signs. Sharing with you.

the caption have the windows keyboard code in (), but you can change that if you are on another OS.

• ° (alt+248)
• ← (alt+27)
• → (alt+26)
• ↑ (alt+24)
• ↓ (alt+25)
• ↔ (alt+29)
• ↕ (alt+18)
• ↳
• ± (alt+241)
• └ (alt+192)
• └→
• nbsp (alt+255)

enjoy

[Mohammad]

Many thanks for sharing!

These are specially useful when preparing academic texts.

Best

Mohammad

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao HC,

Very nice to see that! Hope it is seen and appreciated.

Highlights the issue that some simple things we need repositories for!

An Editor Snippet Repository for user contributions would be a good idea IMO.

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

For those on email, updated my post to include a screenshot ... 

[PMario]

Hi,

Those elements are a bit problematic, since they depend on the OS character table used. So there may be configurations, where those characters are not shown in the right way.

-mario

[PMario]

Hi,

All ASCII characters below 32 are control characters. Eg: Alt-27 is Escape key.

Alt-7 is the BELL which is funny.

In Windows open a PowerShell window and type Alt-7

So it depends on the application how those elements are treated. ... Just to be sure.

-m

[HC Haase]

fredag den 10. januar 2020 kl. 13.05.04 UTC+1 skrev PMario:

Hi,

Those elements are a bit problematic, since they depend on the OS character table used. So there may be configurations, where those characters are not shown in the right way.

Yes you are right. I considered using some Unicode arrows, however, a quick test in different applications, the ASCII arrows worked in more application than the Unicode arrows. Besides -> do anyone know of some other arrows that are broadly supported? Would a Unicode arrow be better?

All ASCII characters below 32 are control characters. Eg: Alt-27 is Escape key.

But in a wiki or word processor these would be interpreted as arrows right?

[Eric Shulman]

On Friday, January 10, 2020 at 5:52:18 AM UTC-8, HC Haase wrote:

Yes you are right. I considered using some Unicode arrows, however, a quick test in different applications, the ASCII arrows worked in more application than the Unicode arrows. Besides -> do anyone know of some other arrows that are broadly supported? Would a Unicode arrow be better?

Here's a link to a nice Unicode reference for arrows:

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/arrows.html

-e 

[TiddlyTweeter]

HC Haase wrote:

 the ASCII arrows worked in more application than the Unicode arrows. Besides -> do anyone know of some other arrows that are broadly supported? Would a Unicode arrow be better?

Unicode has more arrows than God :-)

The issue is fonts. Do ALL the fonts in TW support all the Unicode arrows you want to use? That is the question. They probably do. But worth checking.

Mat a couple of years ago had to change some arrows in a plugin because they were not supported in all of the TW font cascade.

Best wishes

TT

[PMario]

On Friday, January 10, 2020 at 2:52:18 PM UTC+1, HC Haase wrote:

...

All ASCII characters below 32 are control characters. Eg: Alt-27 is Escape key.

But in a wiki or word processor these would be interpreted as arrows right?

I think, it depends on the "substitution" the editors uses. Eg: If you type Alt-27 in a "text-editor" it detects, that there will be an ASCII character that is "not printable" so it replaces it with a "unicode character" that may fit. eg: arrow-left.

But you don't know, which code the editor uses. So if the text is loaded with eg: a different OS using a different font it may be shown as a placeholder char instead.

I did have a similar problem with the browser bookmarks button on different OSes. ..

-mario

[Mat]

I agree there's some basic characters lacking but as some point out, the suggested solutions here can cause problems. This is one reason why I made this proposal for more icons in TW. Please support it if you agree with it or, better yet, if you have even rudimentary skills with SVG maybe you can create them. 

<:-)

[Chuck R.]

Wouldn't using named HTML entities be more useful under more OS combinations?

This one is named: &larr;

[Chuck R.]

No, all fonts do not support all crazy characters. I work for a printer and while we can get our fonts to work on screen, some printers do not support things like the euro (&euro;), different arrows, M dash, N dash, some degree signs, fancy double quotes, actual inch marks (as opposed to a double quote), etc.

One of the problems is we must have at least 20 different Helvetica font varieties, not included bold, italic, and bold italic. Thus some of the Helveticas might support the euro, some might now, and Helvetica is a super common font.