Multiple Unicode character displayed on the fly

Scripting Forums AppleScript Studio & Xcode
#1

I am working on a utility for InDesign CS. This utility will allow the user to automate multiple search/replace commands. The purpose being to clean up supplied text files (removing multipe spaces, multiple returns, etc.). I would like to display a small black triangle as an indication of a space character. Lucida Grande has such a character and since that’s what I’m using in my text boxes I have defined a variable, SpaceChar with the appropriate Unicode information. The handler below works fine IF the first character input is a space. It doesn’t work other than that. :rolleyes:

How can I have a space character replaced anywhere in the text, on the fly?

property SpaceChar : «data utxt25b4»

on keyboard up theObject event theEvent -- called by text fields SearchText and ReplaceText
	if characters of theEvent = " " then
		set theContents to the content of theObject
		if length of theContents > 1 then
			set theContents to characters 1 thru -2 of theContents & SpaceChar as text
		else
			set theContents to SpaceChar
		end if
		set the content of theObject to theContents
	end if
end keyboard up

Thanks in advance,
Brad Bumgarner, CTA

#2

Well that line’s an invitation for AS to screw things up. Aside from being an evil, unsafe way to get substrings, the coercion at the end will turn everything into a string, not Unicode text as you want. Use:

set theContents to text 1 thru -2 of theContents & SpaceChar
#3

Thanks hhas,

I had no idea that I was writing “evil” code. :lol: I shall do my best to mend my evil ways and avoid the “dark side” in the future.

btw, the change works like a charm!

Thanks again,
Brad Bumgarner, CTA

#4

OK, I have another question relating to this issue.

After changing my code, the triangles are appearing in the text fields and in the data cells of my table (using a data source). However, when I retrieve this data (either from the text field or the data source) I get question marks where the triangles should be. At this point I can’t distinguish a “real” question mark from a “space” question mark. Since everything is displaying correctly I know there has to be a way to retrieve the data with the triangles intact (or at least so they can be identified correctly).

Thanks again,
Brad Bumgarner, CTA