[Feature Request] Character map picker

[thexamlguy]

I often find myself going into the Windows Character map to find a character to use for the software that I design and write. I have used other tools such as Universal Character Map which I do find is much clearer to use in comparing to the Windows Character map where the characters displayed are very small.

It definitely would be nice to see a Character Map picker similar to the functionalities found in the Emoji picker and the Color picker, where if I am inside Visual Studio writing XAML I'd like to be able to quickly launch the character map picker, find a character to use and insert the selected character into the Visual Studio editor or any focused text field.

Some ideas:

• Shortcut keys to launch the picker, not sure what we could use though?

• The ability to select a font family with Segoe MDL2 Assets possibly being the default font family

• Clicking a character will automatically insert the character into a focused text field

• We should possibly somehow show options to be able to insert the clicked character as either a character, hex, XAML, or json with a way of making one as the default option preferred by the developer

[Jay-o-Way]

I see many issues being created with the request to add characters to the Keyboard Manager, but this is a different and yet interesting idea. Simply put: a selective version of the "Special character" app, with favorites. Right?

[just1a-person]

I like the idea. A Fluent version of the charmap for UI Design that behaves like the emoji picker..

[ShankarBUS]

You guys could fork Character Map UWP (MIT) and use it as a base.

It has some amazing features such as rendering the glyph to an image, searching glyphs by name, XAML (glyph code and for IconElement) and C# (like "\uE001") glyph code. But no history or recent items are supported.

People would be really happy to see these features included.

I'm waiting eagerly for this to be implemented.

[Jay-o-Way]

Hold on, isn't this basically the same idea as the "character" section in the emoji panel?

[ShankarBUS]

@Jay-o-Way,

No that's not what we're talking about.

The emoji panel only contains symbols and Kaomoji IIRC.

What we need is a glyph picker which would allow us to select and insert glyphs from different fonts.

Did I explain it correctly?

[just1a-person]

This is the new Emoji Picker for Windows. Our "charmap" should look like this

[Jay-o-Way]

I just found this: https://www.figma.com/blog/learn-how-a-microsoft-designer-built-an-internal-icon-library-in-his-spare/

[thisismalindu]

I made a simple app that can be extended very easily for functions like this. https://github.com/thisismalindu/SymbolPicker

Not just symbols like this, you can even extend the usage by adding any kind of custom strings and they will be searchable and can be copied to the clipboard easily. There is a text file where you can add your own stuff easily.

Best part is as you can see we can easily customize this text file with anything we want to use frequently and we can add keywords to search for.

You can easily make a shortcut to the app and then add a shortcut key for it in its properties.

[Jay-o-Way]

@thisismalindu you and @crutkas should talk :)

[Jay-o-Way]

@crutkas maybe you'd like to chat with @EdiWang or @JohnnyWestlake about Character Map UWP?