Special characters
The special characters feature lets you insert mathematical operators, currency symbols, punctuation, graphic symbols (such as arrows or bullets), or Unicode letters typically not accessible from the keyboard (such as umlauts or other diacritics). The feature also supports emojis.
# Demo
Use the special characters toolbar button in the editor below to open a configurable panel with a table of selectable special characters.
Euro foreign exchange reference rates
As of February 10, 2020
All currencies are quoted against the euro (€) as the base currency:
- Currency: US Dollar, symbol: $, spot: 1.0582
- Currency: British Pound, symbol: £, spot: 0.8639
- Currency: Indian Rupee, symbol: ₹, spot: 88.0845
- Currency: Japanese Yen, symbol: ¥, spot: 157.7100
- Currency: Russian Ruble, symbol: ₽, spot: 117.2010
- Currency: Turkish Lira, symbol: ₺, spot: 29.3393
This demo presents a limited set of features. Visit the feature-rich editor example to see more in action.
# Installation
⚠️ New import paths
Starting with version 42.0.0, we changed the format of import paths. This guide uses the new, shorter format. Refer to the Packages in the legacy setup guide if you use an older version of CKEditor 5.
After installing the editor, add the feature to your plugin list and toolbar configuration:
// Core plugin provides the API for the management of special characters and their categories.
// The other provide a basic set of special characters.
import { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials } from 'ckeditor5';
ClassicEditor
.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
plugins: [ SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, /* ... */ ],
toolbar: [ 'specialCharacters', /* ... */ ],
} )
.then( /* ... */ )
.catch( /* ... */ );
# Configuration
By default, a few categories of special characters have been defined. You can easily customize the special characters available in your WYSIWYG editor installation by adding new categories, extending the existing ones, or removing them altogether.
# Adding a new category
You can define a new special characters category using the SpecialCharacters#addItems()
function.
For example, the following plugin adds the “Emoji” category to the special characters dropdown.
import { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials } from 'ckeditor5';
function SpecialCharactersEmoji( editor ) {
editor.plugins.get( 'SpecialCharacters' ).addItems( 'Emoji', [
{ title: 'smiley face', character: '😊' },
{ title: 'rocket', character: '🚀' },
{ title: 'wind blowing face', character: '🌬️' },
{ title: 'floppy disk', character: '💾' },
{ title: 'heart', character: '❤️' }
], { label: 'Emoticons' } );
}
ClassicEditor
.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
plugins: [
SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, SpecialCharactersEmoji,
// More plugins.
// ...
],
toolbar: [ 'specialCharacters', /* ... */ ],
} )
.then( /* ... */ )
.catch( /* ... */ );
After adding the above plugin to the editor configuration, the new category will become available in the special characters dropdown.
The title of a special character must be unique across the entire special characters set.
The third argument of the SpecialCharacters#addItems()
method is optional. You can use it to specify a label displayed as a category name. It is useful when your editor uses a language other than English. Check out the UI language guide to learn more.
Below you can see a demo based on the example shown above. Use the special characters toolbar button and then select “Emoticons” from the dropdown. This will let you insert an emoji into the content.
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# Adding characters to an existing category
By using the SpecialCharacters#addItems()
function you can also add new special characters to an existing category.
import { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials } from 'ckeditor5';
function SpecialCharactersExtended( editor ) {
editor.plugins.get( 'SpecialCharacters' ).addItems( 'Mathematical', [
{ title: 'alpha', character: 'α' },
{ title: 'beta', character: 'β' },
{ title: 'gamma', character: 'γ' }
] );
}
ClassicEditor
.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
plugins: [
SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, SpecialCharactersExtended,
// More plugins.
// ...
],
toolbar: [ 'specialCharacters', /* ... */ ],
} )
.then( /* ... */ )
.catch( /* ... */ );
The title of a special character must be unique across the entire special characters set.
Below you can see a demo based on the example shown above. Use the special characters toolbar button and then select “Mathematical” from the dropdown. You will see that the category now contains the additional Greek letters introduced by the configuration above.
Greek alphabet letters
Greek alphabet letters are used as math and science symbols.
Here are some examples of Greek letters that you can use to represent angles in a triangle:
- Letter name: alpha, Greek letter: α
- Letter name: beta, Greek letter: β
- Letter name: gamma, Greek letter: γ
# Removing categories
The special characters feature exposes each category as a separate plugin. While the SpecialCharactersEssentials
plugin can be used to conveniently include all of them, you can customize the category list by adding individual plugins with particular categories.
By default, the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-special-characters
package provides special characters grouped into the following categories:
SpecialCharactersArrows
– Arrows special characters.SpecialCharactersCurrency
– Currency special characters.SpecialCharactersLatin
– Latin special characters.SpecialCharactersMathematical
– Mathematical special characters.SpecialCharactersText
– Text special characters.SpecialCharactersEssentials
– Combines the plugins listed above.
For example, you can limit the categories to “Mathematical” and “Currency” only by picking the SpecialCharactersMathematical
and SpecialCharactersCurrency
plugins, like so:
import { ClassicEditor, SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersCurrency, SpecialCharactersMathematical } from 'ckeditor5';
ClassicEditor
.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
plugins: [
SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersCurrency, SpecialCharactersMathematical,
// More plugins.
// ...
],
toolbar: [ 'specialCharacters', /* ... */ ],
} )
.then( /* ... */ )
.catch( /* ... */ );
Below you can see a demo based on the example shown above. After clicking the special characters toolbar button , you can see that it contains fewer categories compared to the other editors on this page.
Euro foreign exchange reference rates
As of February 10, 2020
All currencies are quoted against the euro (€) as the base currency:
- Currency: US Dollar, symbol: $, spot: 1.0951
- Currency: British Pound, symbol: £, spot: 0.8463
- Currency: Indian Rupee, symbol: ₹, spot: 78.1070
- Currency: Japanese Yen, symbol: ¥, spot: 120.1800
- Currency: Russian Ruble, symbol: ₽, spot: 70.1120
- Currency: Turkish Lira, symbol: ₺, spot: 6.5897
# Ordering categories
The order of categories in the UI is determined by the order in which they were registered. However, depending on the context in which you use the editor, you might want to change this order, to make it easier to access frequently used characters.
The categories order can be customized using the order
array.
ClassicEditor
.create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
plugins: [ SpecialCharacters, SpecialCharactersEssentials, ... ],
specialCharacters: {
order: [
'Text',
'Latin',
'Mathematical',
'Currency',
'Arrows'
]
}
} )
.then( /* ... */ )
.catch( /* ... */ );
# Common API
The SpecialCharacters
plugin registers the UI button component ('specialCharacters'
).
We recommend using the official CKEditor 5 inspector for development and debugging. It will give you tons of useful information about the state of the editor such as internal data structures, selection, commands, and many more.
# Contribute
The source code of the feature is available at GitHub in https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5/tree/master/packages/ckeditor5-special-characters.
Every day, we work hard to keep our documentation complete. Have you spotted outdated information? Is something missing? Please report it via our issue tracker.
With the release of version 42.0.0, we have rewritten much of our documentation to reflect the new import paths and features. We appreciate your feedback to help us ensure its accuracy and completeness.