Re: Tutorial: Notepad++ shortcuts.xml macro converts unicode to the 95-keyboard ASCII characters

UPDATE:

Currently every shortcuts.xml mapping is written out as a 6-line block:
  1700 -> start search
  1601 -> set search string (funky character)
  1625 -> clear replace buffer
  1602 -> set replacement string (ASCII equivalent)
  1702 -> run replace all
  1701 -> end

That's why the file looks so long and repetitive.
This started as a convertion of just a couple of funky characters to ASCII.
Then it grew over time (years) one by one to include more characters.

We can't avoid the repetition entirely because Notepad++ macros don't
support loops or dictionaries. 

But we can simplify because for Notepad++ macros, we don't actually need
the reset/clear/end lines every time. 

The essential trio is:
 <Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="BADCHAR" />
 <Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="GOODCHAR" />
 <Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
So each mapping shrinks from 6 lines > 3 lines.

However, if we're open to using a plugin (like PythonScript or LuaScript),
we can collapse the whole macro into a dictionary loop such as this:
 mapping = {
    "\u2010": "-",  # hyphen
    "\u2011": "-",  # non-breaking hyphen
    "\u2013": "-",  # en dash
    "\u2014": "-",  # em dash
    "\u2018": "'",  # left single quote
    "\u2019": "'",  # right single quote
    "\u201C": '"',  # left double quote
    "\u201D": '"',  # right double quote
    "\u2026": "...",# ellipsis
    "\u2022": "*",  # bullet
    "\u00A0": " ",  # non-breaking space
    "\uFEFF": "",   # BOM
    # ¡K add the rest
 }

 editor.beginUndoAction()
 for bad, good in mapping.items():
    editor.rereplace(bad, good)
 editor.endUndoAction()

I'll post the test version of the rewritten macro in the next update.
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