UnicodeCopier

So with Linux, .XCompose is half-broken. So I decided to make a simple means to turn arbitrary strings into unicode and copy to the clipboard, using a trivial Qt app.

This uses the jda_unicode_table.py file to define strings, e.g.

jda_unicode_table = {
  "poo": "💩",
  "rr": "Never Gonna Give You Up, Never Gonna Let You Down",
  ...
}

A random thought is that you can use this for arbitrary strings. Moreover, we could use () to pass parameters to functions. Essentially when we parse chars, if a char matches a regex ^\w+\(\S+\)$ then we look up in a functions table or something. But I'm not sure I need anything like that. Probably you'd replace the dict with a callable object that you call with what you want expanding.

The Source

#!/usr/bin/env python

try:
  from setproctitle import setproctitle
  setproctitle("qjda_unicode")
except ModuleNotFoundError:
  pass

import PySide6.QtCore
import PySide6.QtGui
import PySide6.QtWidgets
import PySide6.QtNetwork
from PySide6.QtCore import Qt
import subprocess

from jda_unicode_table import jda_unicode_table
import re

class Input(PySide6.QtWidgets.QTextEdit):
  def __init__(self,*xs,**kw):
    super().__init__(*xs,**kw)

  def keyPressEvent(self,event):
    modifiers = event.modifiers()
    text = event.text()
    key = event.key()
    if key == Qt.Key_C:
      #print("C")
      if modifiers & Qt.ControlModifier:
        #print("Ctrl")
        if modifiers & Qt.ShiftModifier:
          #print("C-S-c")
          self.parent().doCopy()
    super().keyPressEvent(event)

class Win(PySide6.QtWidgets.QWidget):
  def __init__(self,*xs,**kw):
    super().__init__(*xs,**kw)
    self.resize(800,600)
    self.input_text = Input(self)
    self.input_text.resize(800,200)
    self.input_text.move(0,0)
    self.input_text.setAcceptRichText(False)
    self.output_text = PySide6.QtWidgets.QTextEdit(self)
    self.output_text.resize(800,400)
    self.output_text.move(0,200)
    self.output_text.readOnly = True
    self.output_text.setAcceptRichText(False)
    # make plain text, make output read only 

    self.input_text.textChanged.connect(self.handleInput)


  def doCopy(self):
    src = self.output_text.toPlainText()
    print("copy",src)
    PySide6.QtCore.QTimer.singleShot(500, self.afterCopy)
    self.output_text.setStyleSheet("background-color: #070; color: white")
    subprocess.run(["pc"],input=src.encode())

  def afterCopy(self):
    self.output_text.setStyleSheet("")

  def handleInput(self):
    src = self.input_text.toPlainText()
    words = re.split(r"\s+",src.strip())

    out = []
    for word in words:
      outword = []
      for char in word.split(","):
        if char == "":
          pass
        if char in jda_unicode_table:
          outword.append(jda_unicode_table[char])
        else:
          outword.append(f"({char}?)")
      out.append("".join(outword))
    self.output_text.setPlainText(" ".join(out))

if __name__ == "__main__":
  app = PySide6.QtWidgets.QApplication()
  win = Win()
  win.show()
  app.exec()

Command Line Tool

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import sys
import argparse
import re
from jda_unicode_table import jda_unicode_table

def main():
  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog="print_unicode",description="print named unicode chars")
  parser.add_argument("-n","--newline",action="store_true",help="append newline")
  parser.add_argument("input_text",nargs="*",help="words separated by spaces, chars in words by commas")
  ns = parser.parse_args()
  words = re.split(r"\s+"," ".join(ns.input_text).strip())
  out = []
  for word in words:
    outword = []
    for char in word.split(","):
      if char in jda_unicode_table:
        outword.append(jda_unicode_table[char])
      else:
        outword.append(f"({char}?)")
    out.append("".join(outword))
  print(" ".join(out),end="\n" if ns.newline else "")

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

And (where pc is a cross-platform 'copy to clipboard' script, see here) this command, copy_unicode then runs the above and copies.

#!/bin/bash
print_unicode "$@" | pc

So e.g. copy_unicode rr,poo will copy Never Gonna Give You Up, Never Gonna Let You Down💩.