How to add unicode characters from extendscript

[4everJang]

One of my scripts requires entering a unicode character, but I have not yet found the method to do so. I need to use the oDoc.AddText method, which requests the second parameter to be a text string. I can enter a unicode character in the script, but it needs to be pulled from an attribute which carries the unicode number for the character. So how do I go from unicode number to an actual character to be pushed into my doc?

Maybe this is trivial, but I am not getting any results with my trials so far. I have tried using the String.fromCharCode(  ) but that results in a question mark (indicating an unknown character).

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[frameexpert · Accepted solution]

Hi Jang, Try this:

#target framemaker

var doc, pgf, textLoc;

doc = app.ActiveDoc;
pgf = doc.TextSelection.beg.obj;
textLoc = new TextLoc (pgf, 0);

doc.AddText (textLoc, "\u03C3"); // sigma

[Bob_Niland]

re: \u03C3

Note that this works for Unicode BMP characters only (U+0000 to U+FFFF), 4 hex digit \u markup.

FM does not yet properly support any Supplementary Plane characters (U+10000 & up, no known markup notation).

[4everJang]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the code. I expected you would answer.

I tried the code and although it works when using the '\u03C3' as a single string value, I have not been able to assemble the code from the \u prefix with a string value coming from the attribute. The attribute would show '2018' and if I literally create the string '\u2018' it works fine, but when I use the following code it does not:

var sAttrValue = '2018'

(this is actually read from an attribute by another function, but that would make this reply too long and hard to read.

var sCharCode = '\u' + sAttrValue;

Although the combined string should read '\u2018' what happens is that I get the visible text '2018' on my page. For my current project I can live with this as there are only about 10 possible attribute values (i.e. character codes) so I used a switch statement and entered the correct \u values as complete strings. But if there is another application where I would need to read any possible unicode into an extendscript I would not be able to handle it this way. So if you have another trick to make this work I would be happy about that.

Jang

[Klaus Göbel · Accepted solution]

Hi Jang,

try this:

var sAttrValue = "2018";
var sCharCode = String.fromCharCode("0x" + sAttrValue);

[frameexpert]

Klaus, that works for me. Thank you for the useful code.

[4everJang]

Thanks everyone. Nice to get help on various deep-technical things. As you may know, I keep pushing the boundaries of what FrameMaker can do. I am still very much covered in work but I am planning to share some of my scripting tricks when I find the time. Not here, where they will quickly be lost in all the other posts but in a dedicated corner of my Smart Information Design website, so that they remain available as sources of inspiration and reference to taming Frame.