Strange Hidden Characters

I have several editors who are getting very strange hidden characters appearing occasionally. It's not all the time and there doesn't seem to be a pattern. This started with CS4. They will be working and all of a sudden, all of their hidden characters change from the little dot to these large cross-like symbols. They can quit Incopy and restart and the symbols go away, but it's really a hassle. These editors are working on Macs. Has anyone else seen this?

Changed to crosses? Could it be a stigmata type of thing? ;-)
Seriously ... go to this post and download the PDF I link to there, it's a guide to all the hidden/special characters in InDesign as seen in both layout view and story view.
http://indesignsecrets.com/free-guide-to-indesign-special-characters.php
It's like a Field Guide. Let us know which one is a match!
AM

Similar Messages

Error importing CSV files with 'hidden' characters using External Table

Hi Folks
Bit of a strange one here.
We're well used to using the External Table method of loading data from CSV files into the database but a recent event has presented us with a problem.
We have received some CSV files that 'look' like regular CSV files but Oracle will not load them.
When we examined the CSV file using VIM on a UNIX box we saw the following 'hidden' characters between every regular character in the file.
^@So a string that looks like this when opened in Excel/Wordpad etc
"TEST","TEXT"Looks like this when exmained with VIM
^@"^@T^@E^@S^@T^@"^@,^@"^@T^@E^@X^@T^@"Has anyone come across this before?
Many thanks
Simon Gadd
Oracle 11g 11.2.0.1.0

Hi Simon,
^@ represents the NUL character (0x00).
So, most likely, you've got a Unicode-encoded file.
You'll have to specify the character set in the record specification (and if necessary the byte order mark), for instance :
CREATE TABLE ext_table
col1 VARCHAR2(10),
col2 VARCHAR2(10)
ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
TYPE ORACLE_LOADER
DEFAULT DIRECTORY dump_dir
ACCESS PARAMETERS
RECORDS DELIMITED BY '
' CHARACTERSET 'UTF16'
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
LOCATION ('dump.csv')
REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e16536/et_params.htm#i1009499

Find Hidden Characters-in downloaded file

All,
I have a file interface that downloading file to SANS server using open dataset. But recently we are getting some hidden characters in the file. These are getting from a long text.
Now my requirement is to find these hidden characters and display in the screen and user can correct then go for download.
Currently i am using Notepad++ or using this link for finding the hidden characters
http://string.online-toolz.com/tools/string-functions.php
Now user wanted to use the same functionality with in SAP using ABAP.
Any input on this appreciated.
a®

Similar functionality can be achieved by JavaScript. You can pass the entire Text and create your function in JS to find out the Hidden Characters. If you are successful finding the JS which can do this job for you, you can use [JS Engine|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/49/a8e3c8d59811d4b2e90050dadfb92b/frameset.htm] available in ABAP.
Refer to [ABAP & JavaScript|http://help-abap.zevolving.com/2011/10/javascript-in-abap/] to see the simple JS usage.
Regards,
Naimesh Patel

InDesign - Hidden Characters Corrupting Documents

I post this message in the spirit of sharing information, hopefully to be of help others.
I recently encountered a problem after distilling a document from InDesign which, as an Acrobat PDF, would not print - giving three successive error messages:
1. The Document could not be printed.
2. There were no pages selected to print.
3. A drawing error occurred.
Well, that covers about everything !
After about an hour of patient diagnosis I discovered some erroneous characters had appeared in some bullet points and removal of these cured the problem.
I found them only after copying and pasting the text into Word (using the paste as "text only" option) and copying and pasting it back into InDesign. The spurious characters then appeared as a red-highlighted squares and could be easily deleted.
(Note: I had previously used the 'Show hidden characters' option in InDesign which did not reveal these little devils, neither did they 'appear' in the Word document)
I believe the erroneous character is probably a result of formatting which was in the original Word document imported into InDesign and which could be a 'flag' for bullet formatting (in Word).
The lessons I learned from this are:
patiently isolating the section of the document led to the discovery of the problem
be aware, in the future, of possible odd characters appearing (invisibly) from Word and corrupting InDesign documents.
Hope this may be of assistance.
I haven't given version numbers of my software since this is almost certainly not relevant - but the general principle is.
I hope this may be of assistance.

Thankyou for putting that on the record...

Force show (not toggle) hidden characters and threads in script

I have been working on a script to show all the extras (for the most part). I can turn on rulers and frame edges from the DOM, but can not Show Hidden Characters or Show Text Threads from the DOM. I've been working on using menuActions, but there two is a hitch. It seems that the menuActions are only available if the menu has been accessed during the current session? Not 100% on that. There is a good comment (#10) that touches on this a bit at Indiscripts :: How to Create your Own InDesign Menus.
This method works, but again only if the menu has been previously accessed... so it's not reliable:
// locale-independent (should work on non-english versions of InDesign)
// Show Hidden Characters
// FIX/TODO - Only seems to work if the Show/Hide Characters has been toggled within this session?!
var showHiddenChars = app.menuActions.item("$ID/HideHiddenCharactersCmdStr"); //The 'hide' ID String only valid when characters are hidden
var areCharsHidden = (showHiddenChars.isValid);
if (areCharsHidden == true) {
    try {showHiddenChars.invoke()} catch (givenError){alert(givenError.toString())};
else {
        //alert("Hidden characters are already shown!")
I also have a less desirable version of Showing Hidden Characters, which relies on English name property of the Menu Action. It suffers from the same issue.
//~     var acID = acID||
//~             ((t=app.menuActions.item("$ID/ShowHiddenCharactersCmdStr")).isValid&&t.id)||
//~             ((t=app.menuActions.item("$ID/HideHiddenCharactersCmdStr")).isValid&&t.id);
//~     var showHiddenChars = app.menuActions.itemByID(acID);
//~
//~     //if the name property for the menuAction is currently "Hide Hidden Characters", the characters are hidden.
//~     var areCharsHidden = (showHiddenChars.name == "Hide Hidden Characters");
//~     if (areCharsHidden == true) {
//~         try {showHiddenChars.invoke()} catch (givenError){};
//~         }
//~     else {
//~         //alert("Hidden characters are already shown!")
//~         }
Any suggestion on how to force show characters (show threads works the same way) with out having to have had accessed a menu before hand?
Thanks,
Kevin

When you have found a menu action you can remember its ID and use menuActions.itemByID() later on to retrieve it. Most action IDs are hard wired, bound to their implementing plugin. Of course there is an exception for dynamically allocated actions, e.g. script actions.
My first attempt following you is to retrieve the action name - that should trigger the internal method to update the whole action state including checked, enabled (not applicable in this case). Of course it failed, would someone please file a bug? The translated versions of strings that you'd use for the comparison are available via app.translateKeyString().
Btw you are using the wrong string - cmd strings are used for command history as seen in the undo menu. Menu strings usually have an ampersand character to indicate the underline / Alt+Key combo in Windows.
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name==app.translateKeyString("$ID/Show Hidden Characters"));
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name==app.translateKeyString("$ID/Hide Hidden Characters"));
app.translateKeyString("$ID/Show Hidden Characters")
Ergebnis: Verborgene Zeic&hen einblenden
app.translateKeyString("$ID/Hide Hidden Characters")
Ergebnis: &Verborgene Zeichen ausblenden
// failed test
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name);
app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).invoke();
$.writeln(app.menuActions.itemByID(0x1d301).name);
// output should change after invoke
Verborgene Zeichen ausblenden
Verborgene Zeichen ausblenden
As you found command strings, I also had a look at the undo history - it remained empty.
$.writeln(app.activeDocument.undoHistory.length);
Probably the setting is not persisted in the document any more, someone should have removed the command strings.
Then I realized that the output of the previous lines around the invoke had changed as it was expected originally. And I had not touched the menu since restart … but I had activated the application.
One can do that with scripting too - app.activate();
A couple of restarts later this is definitely leading somewhere.
Regarding the command, I also had a second look with a debug build of InDesign: the command is still executed, but there is a flag that binds its undo to the previous command - left as an exercise to verify.
Hmm. It is stored in the persistent document preferences in a structure internally called kDocWorkspaceBoss / ITextOptions, thus should also be exposed for scripting. Back to scripting: set a breakpoint, browse thru tons of document sub-objects, and here we are:
app.activeDocument.textPreferences.showInvisibles
Happy programming,
Dirk
Edit: when comparing the strings, you also have to strip the extra ampersand.

Hidden Characters is not displayed properly

Hi Friends,
I am a user of Adobe Indesign CS4 (6.0.6). lately, I upgraded my MAC OS X to 10.6.4 version. I found out the Hidden Characters in Indesign becomed to be not displayed correctly. I captured a screenshot as below for reference. All Hidden Characters such as forced line break, table are displayed as rectangle box in total like below screenshot.
But when i transfered to Mac OS X 10.4.11, all instances were fine.
If anyone occurred this issue before, kindly please tell how to resolve it.
Thanks in advance.
L1on

Typically I tend to advocate installing Mac OS X on a new hard drive and migrating the profile over. It's a huge timesaver and issues located to profiles are rare and generally easy to diagnose.
This time around though I've had a couple of machines have runaway directory processes, which made me curse Bob for being right again.
I'd still say it is a good idea beyond doing a fresh install to keep your last OS in a bootable format until you are wholly content with it. Migrating back a version of Mac OS X is not for the feint of heart. I had to do it do to printing and application incompatibility and it roached a good half day to get everything back on track on version back.

Hidden Characters Displaying Wrong

So ever since I started using CS4 my InDesign will sometimes show my hidden characters improperly. There doesn't seem to be any consistency in when it happen. The only common thing I can think of is that it sometime happens after I open an Illustrator file, but not always. I have re-installed InDesign and I just reset my preference last week, but It still is happening. Anyone have any Ideas on what is going on and how to fix it?

This is another example

Type Show Hidden Characters doesn't display hidden chars, what to do?

When I select Type > Show Hidden characters, the display does not change and the hidden characters stay hidden. Is there something additional that I need to do to see the hidden characters?

Under View, change your Screen Mode to Normal. In any other mode, guides and hidden characters won't show.

[Mac 4.0.2] Show/Hide Hidden Characters

Hello,
Is it possible for my plugin to get notified when the end-user is switching Show/Hide Hidden Characters from InDesign's Type menu? And if the answer was YES then how could we do that would be the next question . . .
Any pointer or direction to have this event watcher implemented smoothly would be very much appreciated indeed.
Best regards
Patrick Perroud

Hi John,
I modified my script and now I am getting error when I run it first time and when I run it again then it run fine.
set the date_stamp to ((the current date) as string)
tell application "Finder" to quit
set OnOff to do shell script "defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles"
if OnOff = "NO" or OnOff = "OFF" then
set OnOff to "ON"
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "Show all hidden files in this Mac ?" & return & return & date_stamp buttons {"Show Hidden Files", "Cancel"} default button 2 with title "/MSN/" with icon 1
end tell
else
set OnOff to "OFF"
tell application "Finder"
display dialog "Hide all hidden files in this Mac ?" & return & return & date_stamp buttons {"Hide Hidden Files", "Cancel"} default button 2 with title "/MSN/" with icon 1
end tell
end if
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles " & OnOff
delay 1
tell application "Finder" to launch

Show hidden characters shortcut causes crash

I'm running CS4 on Mac OS 10.5.8 (Indesign 6.0.4 which I believe is the latest).
Lately, InDesign has started crashing when I use command+opt+I (the shortcut for show hidden characters), which I do A LOT for text design purposes. It doesn't crash every single time I use the key combo, but it's gotten to about 50% of the time, so that I'm afraid to use it. I'm very shortcut oriented rather than menu oriented, so please don't suggest I just stop using the shortcut (that's what my IT guy would suggest). It took me forever to even remember what the command was called that I was doing -- I ended up finding it by accident.
Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone have any advice/suggestions?
Thanks!

I would start by Quitting Indesing, removing (putting on Desktop in case you have custom settings saved there) the Indesign Prefs;
/Users/YOUR HOME FOLDER/Library/Preferences (Indesign Folder & .plist) and also removing the Indesign Cache folder;
/Users/YOUR HOME FOLDER/Library/Caches.

"show hidden characters" is not working

InDesign CC. Neither the show/hide grid nor the show/hide hidden characters works.

Maybe you're in the wrong screen mode. Try View -> Screen Mode; invisibles like gridlines and hidden characters will appear in Normal, but IIRC not in Preview.

View code view options hidden characters problem

When I turn on the Hidden characters I get extra tab symbols at the end of the line of code. These will somtimes lay on top of or beyond the paragraph symbol. I have tried using other font and font sizes and some do work better than others. It seems like the text in the code view dosn't respect the hidden characters at all and some times the cursor looks like it is one place but edits a character over one space. Any ideas on the best font and size to use and is there any one else experincing this and or a fix?

Not sure I understand the issue you're having.
I'm using CS6 ver 12.2, build 6006 on Windows.
The font is Courier New 12pt.
See screenshot.
Nancy O.

How can i see hidden characters for email passwords?

how can I see hidden characters for email passwords?

You can't. Under what circumstances are you hoping to see the characters? When you type them in? You do see each character as you type it in for a fraction of a second. But you can't see the whole thing.

PC to Mac hidden characters

Having problems displaying hidden characters and guides when opening a document created on a PC (CS3) on a Mac. Any tricks, suggestions?

It has nothing to do with Windows/Mac. The document is likely in a
preview mode.
Bob

Web browsers are displaying 'hidden characters' or dashes between words

I've just updated to Snow Leopard and now all of my web browsers are displaying 'hidden characters' or dashes in between words on websites like Yahoo and others. Headlines looks like something like this: The-best-places-to-live-in-America. Also, numbers are displayed with a box around each character and a horizontal line going through them, making them almost unreadable. This is happening with Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Is there anyway to fix this problem?

menchee wrote:
Is there an option on those browsers to not 'allow pages to choose their own fonts'.
No. To fix it with them you have to get rid of the fonts installed on your system which are causing the problem. The code of the web pages is calling for certain fonts, and you have junk installed which is substituting for the real ones. You be able to see the junk by looking at samples in Fontbook.

Strange Hidden Characters

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for