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UnicodeChecker Services

UnicodeChecker provides several conversion services to any application supporting the “Services Menu” of Mac OS X. They can be found in the “Unicode” menu item of the “Services” menu in each application’s main menu.

Some of the services (namely the Unicode/HTML conversions) pop up a notification window telling you how many entities have been replaced.

If you have Growl installed UnicodeChecker will use Growl notifications. UnicodeChecker determines whether you have Growl installed. If not UnicodeChecker will use its own notification pop ups. If you encounter any problems using Growl in conjuction with UnicodeChecker you can tell UnicodeChecker to never use Growl notifications by opening Terminal and typing the following command:

  defaults write net.earthlingsoft.UnicodeChecker UseGrowlIfAvailable 0

In order to re-enable Growl notifications type:

  defaults write net.earthlingsoft.UnicodeChecker UseGrowlIfAvailable 1

Enabling and Disabling Individual Services and Setting Keyboard Shortcuts

Since Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) you can enable and disable individual services from the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab of the “Keyboard” pane of System Preferences (open Keyboard Shortcuts). In the list on the left, select “Services”. You can also navigate here by choosing the “Services Preferences…” command from the “Services” menu in the Apple menu. Add a checkmark in front of the services that you want to use. Here, you can also set or change keyboard shortcuts for each service. See below for a list of all services that UnicodeChecker provides.

If you are using Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or earlier there is no user interface availabel for enabling and disabling services. (You could try to edit the “Info.plist” file within the UnicodeChecker application bundle but this is only recommended for users who know what they are doing.) Keyboard shortcuts for services can be changed or set from the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab in the “Keyboard & Mouse” pane of your System Preferences:

Assigning a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences

  1. Open Keyboard Shortcuts.
  2. Click the “+” button.
  3. Enter the name of the menu command as it appears in the “Unicode” submenu of the “Services” menu (or copy the name from the list below).
  4. Choose a keyboard shortcut.

List of UnicodeChecker’s Services

ServiceNotes
Add Percent Escapessee Escapes
Convert from IDNA Hostname representationsee IDNA
Convert to IDNA Hostname representationsee IDNA
Convert to UTF-8 Hexadecimal Character Code
Convert to Unicode Decimal Character Code
Convert to Unicode Hexadecimal Character Code
Convert to Unicode Normalization Form C
Convert to Unicode Normalization Form D
Convert to Unicode Normalization Form KC
Convert to Unicode Normalization Form KD
Display Character Information
HTML Entities → Unicode
HTML Entities → Unicode, preserving ASCII (& < etc.)
Replace Percent Escapessee Escapes
Unicode → HTML Entities
Unicode → HTML Entities, preserving ASCII (& < > " etc.)