source-foundry/Hack

Viewing invisible special purpose characters while coding

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#196 opened on Apr 21, 2016

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Character SetContribute!enhancementhelp wanted

Description

Providing a distinct symbol for each invisible character (BOM, Combining Grapheme Joiner, Left-to-right mark / Right-to-left mark, Soft hyphen Word joiner, Zero-width joiner, Zero-width non-joiner, Zero-width space) is really useful while creating UI and processing text. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Character_Set_characters#Special-purpose_characters)

https://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/glyphs.htm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:IEC_60417_symbols

When you are coding you want to see such characters. They are needed to be invisible only for the end-users. Similar to clicking on ¶ when you are authoring a document in MS word or other text-editors.

For example, copy and run this in js console: ‍‍"OK"=="O‌K". It returns false. Do you know why? The advantages of being able to see theses invisible characters are specially clear for me and whose their writing system use such characters frequently (Persian, German, Hebrew, …).

There are not many invisible special purpose characters. these should be enough to be included: bgh2t 1

Contributor guide

Tech stack
None
Domain
design
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
font design toolsUnicode special charactersHack font source files
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
40
Research direction
Examine the Hack font source files (likely in .ufo or .glyphs format) to understand the current glyph set and design. Identify the specific invisible characters listed in the issue (e.g., BOM, Zero width space) and create distinct glyphs following the font's existing style. Use provided Wikipedia links and other references for character shapes. Consider reaching out to maintainers via comments for guidance on design consistency.