[Feature]Unicode/Emoji support in LES Menu on Windows 10

[treeslovesyou]

My LES Menu has become cluttered, even using submenus as wisely as I can. At this point with LES my workflow bottleneck has become scanning the menus I've created for the exact thing I am looking for. I've tried editing my menu and inserting unicode/emoji to the menu entries there, and while my text editor shows them just fine the LES menu does not. It instead shows a series of symbols/text, something unicode uses internally to designate emoji/symbols.

I tend to think and learn visually and as such being able to better visually distinguish menu entries would be beneficial. Ideally I would like to be able to add a unicode symbol or emoji to the menu for certain entries, to use as a sort of visual bookmark when looking at long lists.

I've considered just adding punctuation or basic one-line ascii to mark off sections of my menus, but I think having access to color and imagery would help a lot.

[enoversum]

@treeslovesyou Ah, damn, there is a setting in Windows that allows for Unicode symbols. I am using the LES menu with icons since about a year. I just don't remember where the setting was…
Edit: I believe I found it. A bit hard to navigate you, as I have a German system. In the old system settings, there should be a 'Region' setting. On the second tab (Management possibly?) you should find a Beta setting for UTF-8 support for languages. I believe enabling this lets you add Unicode/Emoticons even in less menus.

[Inversil]

it might be a cool idea to add a feature that enables this setting automatically if someone tries to use an emote in their menu, but I'd need to know the registry value for toggling the feature.

[enoversum]

@Inversil I see, and yes, that would be great. Would that possibly help?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56419639/what-does-beta-use-unicode-utf-8-for-worldwide-language-support-actually-do
I have no idea, but they mention a place where the settings in the registry are anchored at.

[Inversil]

I'm adding support for this in the next update

[Inversil]

fixed in this commit! I will make a build later after some more testing.
it will now prompt the using asking if they want to implement the fix on their system, the one that @enoversum linked over at stackoverflow.

feel free to clone the git and run the .ahk if you want to try it

41773fd

[zhoobin021]

I was already using emoji and everything(black&white) in LES 1.3 and LES 1.2.2. but now in LES 1.3.5 when I enable UTF-8 it keeps on asking me "would you like to enable Emoji support....". and when it brings the menu instead of emoji, there are symbols and special characters (see image below):

but when running LES 1.3 or LES 1.2.2, I can see emoji fine in the menu (see image below):

please let me know if there is a fix for this or if I'm doing anything wrong! Thank you.

[zhoobin021]

@treeslovesyou Ah, damn, there is a setting in Windows that allows for Unicode symbols. I am using the LES menu with icons since about a year. I just don't remember where the setting was… Edit: I believe I found it. A bit hard to navigate you, as I have a German system. In the old system settings, there should be a 'Region' setting. On the second tab (Management possibly?) you should find a Beta setting for UTF-8 support for languages. I believe enabling this lets you add Unicode/Emoticons even in less menus.

Thank you for your solution.I have tried this.
Control Panel>>>Region>>>Administrative>>>Change system locale...>>>✅Beta:Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support

and it does fix the issue with LES 1.3.5
However, when I try to open After Effects I get this error :
AE Error: Could not convert Unicode Characters 23::46

and this can only be fixed when unchecking the box (Beta: use unicode UTF-8).

[enoversum]

@treeslovesyou Ah, damn, there is a setting in Windows that allows for Unicode symbols. I am using the LES menu with icons since about a year. I just don't remember where the setting was… Edit: I believe I found it. A bit hard to navigate you, as I have a German system. In the old system settings, there should be a 'Region' setting. On the second tab (Management possibly?) you should find a Beta setting for UTF-8 support for languages. I believe enabling this lets you add Unicode/Emoticons even in less menus.

Thank you for your solution.I have tried this. Control Panel>>>Region>>>Administrative>>>Change system locale...>>>✅Beta:Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support

and it does fix the issue with LES 1.3.5 However, when I try to open After Effects I get this error : AE Error: Could not convert Unicode Characters 23::46

and this can only be fixed when unchecking the box (Beta: use unicode UTF-8).

Good to hear it solved your LES trouble with emojis. I however don't know how or if you could circumvent your new AE problems in any way. I have UTF-8 enabled since years, and never knowingly ran into any clatter with apps not supporting the setting. I hope you'll find a way. LES is more fun with icons in use 😉.