Interpret Japanese full-width space character as a space character [Fixed 2.7.2 b400]

[firstday]

Given Alfred attempts to support different language keyboard inputs, I figured this qualifies as a minor bug rather than a feature request. Apologies if I figured wrong.

 

Alfred currently seems to rely on the standard, western-text space character to separate keywords and variables. When you're in a Japanese keyboard, though, typing a space character generates a full-width space, which is a different character (unicode U+3000, 　) than the western-text space. Alfred does not recognize the full-width space as a space for keyword/variable parsing purposes, which means you have to switch into a western text-type to enter a space. Depending on a user's system configuration, this is a minor difficulty that would inhibit their full enjoyment of Alfred. Here's my particular use case to demonstrate the issue:

 

I'm studying Japanese and frequently want to quickly look up words in an online dictionary, jisho.org. I have a custom web search configured using a western-text keyword for when I'm in U.S. keyboard mode that works great regardless of whether the query is in U.S. or Japanese text. But I'm often not in the U.S. keyboard when I want to look something up, so I created a custom web search using "じしょ" (Japanese for "dictionary") as the keyword. That keyword works only if I switch to a U.S. keyboard to type a space then enter the query term, but that defeats the purpose. If I type a full-width space with the Japanese keyboard, Alfred seems to treat that as another character in the keyword, not the keyword delimiter. Some screenshots:

• Just the keyword (じしょ): http://it.ishe.re/image/2e0S0r2M3H0L
• Keyword + full-width space: http://it.ishe.re/image/0G0Z3L3y3j3w
• Keyword + full-width space + query term: http://it.ishe.re/image/2e3j2P1i452H
• Keyword + western-style space + query term: http://it.ishe.re/image/0s3P1Y2l1f0Y

I figured out a work-around for this: add a western-text space to the end of the keyword definition, making it "じしょ ". So if I type "じしょ" (no space), Alfred will predict I'm typing "じしょ " (space at the end), letting me choose the prediction to replace the input string to "じしょ " (space at the end) without having to switch keyboards. This is barely annoying at all, but it seems like Alfred ought to recognize Japanese full-width spaces as spaces as a general matter. Likely this would be helpful in other ways (replacing them with "%20" or "+" for example) and probably there are other language keyboards that are similarly affected.

 

Thanks!

[Andrew]

Thanks!

 

Hi Jonathan,

 

This ticket must have been mis-processed as I already have a ticket raised by you in the system from a while back but un-targetted... I have moved it forward to 2.7.2 so hopefully this will be fixed in the next release. Sorry about that!

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[Andrew]

This should now be fixed in the 2.7.2 b400 pre-release, available in Alfred's update prefs

[firstday]

This ticket must have been mis-processed as I already have a ticket raised by you in the system from a while back but un-targetted.

 

No worries, I'd completely forgotten! It wasn't until I searched for "alfredapp" in my email just now that I discovered that old email and understood what you meant here.

 

This should now be fixed in the 2.7.2 b400 pre-release, available in Alfred's update prefs

 

I was very stoked to see that in the release notes. Thanks!