- View and post all Unicode characters
- View old posts as they were
- Convert pasted text to ASCII
- Add images easily to posts
- Use with Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge and Opera, PC or Mac
This browser extension is specifically for Engaged users on The WELL, it does nothing on any other website. It enables viewing and posting all Unicode, overriding the Engaged server settings that limit characters to the Windows-1252 extended ASCII character set. It also provides an automatic translation of your text posts into ASCII for compatibility with users who can't view Unicode. A feature for simple posting of images is also included.
Chrome/Brave/Edge/Opera - Available in Chrome Web Store
Firefox - Firefox add-on is now available for download in the gallery.
Android - This requires using the open source Chrome browser Kiwi, available in the Google Play Store. The extension will load from the Chrome Web Store link.
iPhone Safari iOS - Not at this time. Ask an Apple Developer to use this open source to create this for those platforms.
Updating The link at the bottom of post pages like this <Engaged UTF-8 0.1.6> will download the latest version. If the folder name inside ends with the same version number as the link, you are current and do not need to update.
What it does - The extension makes two changes to the character encoding used by Engaged. Pages are shown with the UTF-8 Unicode characters rather than ISO-8859-1, and posts are accepted with UTF-8 characters instead of ASCII. The effect is the same as what Picospan users now see and post with current versions of terminal software that use the UTF-8 characters by default.
Checkboxes are added to the bottom of pages that contain posts. When unchecked, Engaged users will see and post exactly as the Picospan users are doing. However, this displays the Unicode Unknown character � for posts that use the old encoding, mostly seen in quotes and apostrophes but also for many characters with diacritical marks like résumé and señor as well as € and © for example.
When the box show I�m as I'm is checked, the extension will replace posts containing bad Unicode with the original post encoding that was used. This will eliminate almost all character troubles, regardless of how the original post was created. Most users will leave this box checked. Click show � to see the UTF-8 version of the posts that have this.
The box with post in ASCII will translate any text in the response box into pure ASCII when checked. This prevents posting Unicode characters, they are replaced with (?), but it guarantees that no incompatible characters remain in your posts. When copy/pastecontent is used in posts, this will convert “I’m in a café sipping a €10 lattè into "I'm in a cafe sipping a EUR10 latte. Note the changed quote and missing diacritcals as well as EUR.
Most users will leave both boxes checked. However, you can create posts with both ASCII and UTF-8. By unchecking the post in ASCII box first, you can add any Unicode after the ASCII postion. This will not be readable for other Engaged users unless they are using this extension or another UTF-8 compatible viewing mode. For example this laughing face emoji 😂 looks like 😂 with the old character encoding.
Line breaks - Engaged automatically adds new lines to posts whenever there are more words or characters than can fit on an 80 column screen. The extension does not change that, but both Unicode and ASCII translations can affect the line lengths. Use Spellcheck for a preview of your post to see where line breaks will occur. Note that Unicode characters may be up to four times wider, and they can be damaged by crossing a line break. Again, Spellcheck will show your post and how its lines may change. ASCII translation can add length to lines too.
Clicking Add Image previews an example link of the Well logo followed by a Size box for a digit from 1 - 9 to size the image for your post. A single number keystroke will change the image size with an instant preview. Using 6 (or blank) will match the width ofthe post text. The actual image needs to be a link hosted somewhere on the web, this extension does not store a copy. I found that I can upload an image to Imgur (not logged in) and use the actual image link (right click, copy image link) instead of the link they offer.
The <img src=> html will be added after any text already in the Postbox. You can add more text after it or move it. If you decide not to use the image you can remove it easily by deleting the link. And if you have tried another image but want the one you had previously, Z or ctrl-z will bring back the previous link