Re: [tip/offtopic] A function to describe the characters of a word at point

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2022-07-13, at 12:49, Juan Manuel Macías <maciaschain@posteo.net> wrote:

> Sorry for the slight offtopic.

Not off-topic at all, as far as I'm concerned!  (Though sending this to
help-gnu-emacs might be an even better idea.)  I use `C-u C-x =' pretty
often, so I fully understand why someone might want to code something
like this.  Very nice, thanks for sharing!

You might want to extend it and create a minor mode which would display
data about the current character in the echo area, Eldoc-style, or in
a tooltip when you hover the mouse pointer over a character.  Depending
on what exactly you need, these ideas might be more or less useful, of
course.

Also, since the answer to quite a few org-related issues seems to be
"just insert a zero-width space", making those stand out (like
non-breaking spaces already are) could also be useful.  FWIW, I have
this function in my init.el:

(defun insert-zero-width-space ()
  "Insert Unicode character \"zero-width space\"."
  (interactive)
  (insert "​"))

(of course, the 0-width space is invisible between the quotes).

Best,
mbork



> Since Unicode and character issues come up here from time to time, I'm
> sharing this 'homemade' function that I wrote a long time ago for my
> work, in case someone finds it useful. It Shows a brief descriptive list
> of all characters in a word at point. Each character includes the
> Unicode name, code, and canonical decomposition. Example:
>
> ἄρχοντα >>
>
> ἄ (#1f04) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA ... descomp: #1f00 #301
> ρ (#3c1) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO ... descomp: #3c1
> χ (#3c7) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI ... descomp: #3c7
> ο (#3bf) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON ... descomp: #3bf
> ν (#3bd) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER NU ... descomp: #3bd
> τ (#3c4) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU ... descomp: #3c4
> α (#3b1) ... GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA ... descomp: #3b1
>
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
>   (defun describe-chars-word-at-point ()
>     (interactive)
>     (setq chars-in-word nil)
>     (if
>         (not (current-word t t))
>         (error "Not in a word at point...")
>       (let
>           ((word (current-word t t)))
>         (save-excursion
>           (with-temp-buffer
>             (insert word)
>             (goto-char (point-min))
>             (while (re-search-forward "\\(.\\)" nil t)
>               (let* ((char-name (save-excursion
>                                   (backward-char)
>                                   (get-char-code-property (char-after (point)) 'name)))
>                      (char-desc (save-excursion
>                                   (backward-char)
>                                   (get-char-code-property (char-after (point)) 'decomposition)))
>                      (char-format (concat (match-string 1) "\s" "("
>                                           (format "#%x" (string-to-char (match-string 1)))
>                                           ")\s...\s" char-name "\s...\sdecomp:\s"
>                                           (mapconcat (lambda (cod)
>                                                        (format "#%x" cod))
>                                                      char-desc " "))))
>                 (push char-format chars-in-word)))
>             (when (get-buffer "*chars in word*")
>               (kill-buffer "*chars in word*"))
>             (get-buffer-create "*chars in word*")
>             (set-buffer "*chars in word*")
>             (insert (mapconcat 'identity
>                                (reverse chars-in-word) "\n"))
>             (view-mode)
>             (temp-buffer-window-show "*chars in word*"
>                                      '((display-buffer-below-selected display-buffer-at-bottom)
>                                        (inhibit-same-window . t)
>                                        (window-height . fit-window-to-buffer))))
>           (pop-to-buffer "*chars in word*")))))
> #+end_src


-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl