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Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
#43850 03/06/17 07:53 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
deniro Offline OP
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I copy and paste a lot of text from web pages via Firefox.

The diacritical marks don't always transfer, and I see many because what I'm doing involves a lot of foreign names. I'd like to figure out what's involved here. I'm thinking of factors like text encoding, fonts, html code, and how certain programs interpret the copied text.

I do most of my writing in Tom Bender's Tex-Edit Plus, which has some really nice features, esp. its text cleanup, but it can't read diacriticals very well, hardly at all. This is what I'd like to correct.

Some other examples. Text Wrangler 3.5.3 does transfer the text with diacritical marks exactly, but without other html formatting, which I like. Pages and Tex-edit transfer all html formatting, which of course includes the diacriticals. So these programs are obviously doing something that Tex-Edit Plus isn't or can't. Maybe there's a preference, tweak, or action that will allow me to paste into TE Plus without losing all the formatting. I don't mind losing some. I don't want the html code to transfer, just the diacriticals.

Interestingly, I can copy-paste into Text Wrangler then copy-paste the same text into TE Plus and many, but not all, of the diacriticals transfer properly. Of course, I wouldn't want to add that step to my workflow, which is already full of tedious, repetitive tasks: copy, paste, text clean up, search and replace. I've been trying to figure out grep searches but have been unable to. There ought to be a way to use Applescript or Automator to handle those tasks. A way that I can figure out, that's another matter.

Regardless, this is a subject I've been wondering about for a long time. It isn't typing diacritical marks that's a problem. It's transferring them from one place to another.

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43852 03/06/17 08:15 PM
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If your diacritical marks/characters are Unicode — check your Mac's Character Viewer — then they should transfer over. I've rarely had the problem when transfer texts from web pages/sources in Firefox; for me it usually involves trying to transfer such via Gmail.
(A similar thing happens in FTM and Gmail: When I try to separate words or sentences with 2 spaces, FTM and Gamil change it to a single space.)

I think you're screwed, but others more knowledgeable about the underpinnings can probably be more helpful.

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43855 03/07/17 03:01 AM
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Virtually everything that you find on the internet is UTF-8 encoded, and unfortunately, Tom Bender's Tex-Edit Plus has almost no ability to deal with unicode. It's been a great text editing program for many years, but it's not really up to the task anymore. I've pretty much given up on it. I've been hoping for a major update to it, but nothing so far.

The TextEdit program that's bundled with the Mac has no problem with diacriticals, because it works with unicode.

Last edited by Bob_00001; 03/07/17 03:02 AM.

MacBook Pro 15" (2015)
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Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
Bob_00001 #43861 03/07/17 07:01 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
deniro Offline OP
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I like TE Plus most of all for its text cleanup and search and replace, which I use several times a day almost every day.

Typing is faster than in Pages, which bogs down. I have to wait for Pages to catch up to my typing, and I'm not a speedy typist. Pages files are bigger and take up more drive space. They load slower and are proprietary. TE Plus lets me get to work right now and stays out of my way. The word count is better, line numbering, showing invisibles, and on. I've meant to tackle its scripting ability but haven't yet. I find it a better program than Pages for what I need to do, though I use both. I use Pages for printing, for pasting html text, for documents with columns, tables, outlining, for letters, serious documents. The spell checker is better than in TE Plus, though both are supposed to draw from the same system-wide database.

I used NeoOffice for a while, before I got Pages, but now almost never. It, too, is slow, loaded with far too many features, with a learning curve for just about anything you want to do. I don't need to do everything and I don't want to learn how to do everything. Occasionally it will read documents that my other programs can't. That might be its only virtue.

Other possibilities. A text cleanup program? Textsoap, for example, though it can't do everything TE Plus does. I don't want to add another program into my workflow.

I would like to like Text Wrangler. It's faster than TE Plus, does a better job of handling large documents, but it's more complicated, doesn't quite do what TE Plus does, offers little in text formatting, and is more of a programmer's tool. Like Text Wrangler, TE Plus handles grep searches, and it's search/replace in general seems better for what I need. The interface is better organized. The program is simply easier to use. It allows me to get work done with the smallest learning curve.

What else to say? It's a fine program. I can't even recall how many years ago I started using it. Long time.



Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43862 03/07/17 07:04 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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Certain diacritical marks seem to paste easier than others. Programs seem to have the hardest time with marks in Scandinavian and eastern European names.

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
grelber #43863 03/07/17 07:07 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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grelber: Character Viewer doesn't tell me much. Nothing about Unicode.

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43864 03/07/17 07:14 PM
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deniro Offline OP
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What about the Text Encoding under View in Firefox? What should that be?

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43865 03/07/17 08:14 PM
Joined: Sep 2009
deniro Offline OP
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Well, this is interesting.

I found I can paste text with Norwegian diacritical marks into TE Plus if I do it in smaller portions. A page long list will have garbled characters, but copying and pasting part of the list, then another part, will retain the formatting.

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43866 03/07/17 08:54 PM
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There is a beta version of Tex-Edit plus dated Sept 2016, you might give that a try.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43867 03/07/17 11:41 PM
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Originally Posted By: deniro
Character Viewer doesn't tell me much. Nothing about Unicode.

Character Viewer contains a section of all Unicode characters — at least it does in Lion.

Re: Copy-pasting diacritical marks from Firefox
deniro #43868 03/07/17 11:45 PM
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Originally Posted By: deniro
What about the Text Encoding under View in Firefox? What should that be?

Default setting is usually UTF-8.
Check under the info sign in the URL window and/or under Viewer for the pages you are accessing in Firefox.


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