special-character-input

Plain javascript for adding a minimalistic UTF-8 character selection.

Ugly Demo: https://dainst.github.io/special-character-input

General

• The script is originally intended to be used in Koha, but should work on any website.
• The script automatically attaches a button (⌨️) to your page's body element, fixed to the top right.
• You can configure your character groups by editing the specialCharacters.json.
• Backlink to Koha Wiki: https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/SpecialCharacters

Setup in Koha

We added the following function to our IntranetUserJS:

function loadSpecialCharacterSelection(){
  var fileRef = document.createElement('script')
  fileRef.setAttribute("type","text/javascript")
  fileRef.setAttribute("src", "/intranet-tmpl/prog/js/specialCharacters.js")
  
  document.querySelector("head").appendChild(fileRef);
}

As you can see, the javascript (and implicitely JSON) file is expected to be found at /intranet-tmpl/prog/js by default. If you want to change the paths, you have to either edit the snippet above AND the javascript file for the new JSON path, or you can do something like this:

var specialCharactersJsonPath = "/path/to/json/specialCharacters.json"

function loadSpecialCharacterSelection(){
  var fileRef = document.createElement('script')
  fileRef.setAttribute("type","text/javascript")
  fileRef.setAttribute("src", "/path/to/javascript/specialCharacters.js")
  
  document.querySelector("head").appendChild(fileRef);
}