OpenRefine / OpenRefine/OpenRefine

Add a "display unprintable chars" toggle mode

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Module: Frontend Theme: UX/Usability Type: Feature Request
Dominant language
Java
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Description

As mentioned in #1268 ... because I'm a purist and because I work with UTF-8 quite a bit and unprintable control characters are significant to my work...

I want to see in OpenRefine a toggle mode for DISPLAY UNPRINTABLE CHARS for our users (like the ACK and CR/LF below)...so that they show up and are highlighted with special coloring/font. This toggle mode should work perhaps on both datagrids & facets, and perhaps other dialogs or extension mechanisms, yet to be determined.

This is work to be done in the future in part of our UI Enhancement project(s).

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We will want to utilize CSS styling for this and not actual Javascript replacement characters.
An example of how CSS Styling in a cell could be utilized for the various unprintable control characters:
http://mleibman.github.io/SlickGrid/examples/example8-alternative-display.html

Another alternative might be https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/symbol and calling <use> whenever we need to show unprintable characters

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the UI Enhancement project and review the datagrids and facets alongside the linked SlickGrid alternative-display example. Define which interfaces the toggle supports and how control characters are highlighted with CSS; done means unprintable characters are visible without JavaScript replacement characters.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
css, javascript
Domain
frontend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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