307145 - Implement Unicode character entry shortcut so that "20ac alt-x" becomes 'Euro'

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Widget: Win32, enhancement)

Description

[Dan Kohn]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

Microsoft Office (Word, Outlook, etc.) includes a very useful feature for
inputing arbitrary Unicode characters: enter the hexadecimal number of the
character and then push alt-x.  For example, "20ac alt-x" becomes €.  This would
be a very useful feature for both Thunderbird message windows and also Firefox
text input boxes in forms.  I believe the feature would be equally useful on all
platforms.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Dan Kohn]

Sorry, I didn't realize the webpage would be shown in ISO-8859-1.  What I meant
to show is that entering "20ac alt-x" displays the character U+20ac, which is
the Euro character.

Comment 2

[Karsten Düsterloh]

The text codecs of <http://mnenhy.mozdev.org> could help as a workaround.

Comment 3

[Jungshik Shin]

IMO, this should be a platform-specific bug. 'hhhh alt-x' in MS Office is
implemented using one of a few input 'controls' (?) available on Windows (I
forgot the name). On modern Linux, a similar method is available (the same is
likely to be the case for OS X). 

Comment 4

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

It's very useful. But I cannot understand when office converts.
# I didn't know this. thanks.

20ac|   -> '€'
0020ac| -> '€'
0020|ac -> ' ac'
 |ac    -> '0020ac'
x20ac|  -> not converting
€20ac|  -> '€€'
  |     -> ' 0020'

I think:

If previous charcter is space, it converts to '0020'.
If 'previous word' is hex number that can convert to UTF-16, it converts to U+HHHH.
If 'previous word' is not hex number, it converts or does nothing.(?)

Comment 5

[Jungshik Shin]

See http://www.unicode.org/faq/font_keyboard.html#3 and
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/commctls/richedit/richeditcontrols/aboutricheditcontrols.asp
(RichEdit control)

Comment 6

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

If 'previous word' is large number ( if the number >= 10ffff ), Office always
converts last character to Unicode Number.

Comment 7

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

Should we support only on Windows? I think that we should implement converting
function in nsEditor. But I don't know where is best for to implement the
trigger(alt + x).

Comment 8

[Dainis Jonitis]

This is very similar to bug 270439. Like fix for 270439 this can be easily done in XBL (I actually implemented 270439 functionality), but to this work in anything past 1.0 the fix for security bug that prevents the code to generate key events should be undone. There was bug that already have patch to allow key event generation in textbox, but I think it is not yet checked in.

Comment 9

[Dainis Jonitis]

That bug I was talking is 303713. Not yet reviewed or checked in.

Comment 10

[Rob Arnold [:robarnold]]

We already support one standard method to input characters by number: hold alt, press the 4 digit numeric sequence on the number pad (0232 for example), release alt.

This is better left implemented outside of widget/src/windows. It relies upon knowing the content of the textbox and modifying that content (XBL seems like a better place to handle this).

This behavior is also not supported by the regular Windows edit control (only Office and richedit).

Comment 11

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

I don't think that we should implement this feature because:

- As mentioned in comment 10, there is a Windows standard way to input a Unicode character from the code. Additionally, this has already been supported.
- In these days, there are a lot of complicated web apps which handle keyboard events deeply.  I.e., the feature may cause breaking some web apps.
- Neither Chrome nor Edge supports this.