Hyphens auto styled to longform hyphen

#1

Can someone please explain to me why you cannot turn off auto-formatting of text in the application? Specifically… why, when I type “–” it auto corrects to “–” in all places and all instances.

I understand why this is useful when I’m writing emails… but when i’m assigning names to widgets, I’d like to use a single hyphen and double hyphen separately.

so something like “icon-command-commandBar–floppyDisk” to essentially say “this is an icon, for a command, in the command bar, uniquely named ‘floppyDisk’”

but it ends up being “icon-command-commandBar–floppyDisk” so at a glance it looks like they are all normal hyphens and I can’t use the – to locate objects in the outline page… for example, if type “–” in the search bar, only unique widgets should show up. not the 40 instances of things like horizontal rules or 40 cells in a table (since the repeater widget can’t handle my data because it’s more than 20 rows by 20 columns… ugh different issue altogether)

any help is appreciated! not a huge deal but i’m trying to standardize my widget naming conventions for better organization.

#2

To make things worse… after I’ve forced “–” to be included in my widget names by typing “–” first, having it correct automatically, then backspacing and doing it again and it then keeps…

I decided to Find>Replace all “–” with “=” to make my life easier.

Welp… in the Find and Replace fields… “–” will ALWAYS autocorrect to “–” no matter what you do. So now I’ll have to go back and hand edit all of them :sob:

someone please fix thisssssss

#3

I tend to use underscore “_” rather than dashes as the _uniqueIdentifier

So icon-command-commandBar–floppyDisk = icon-command-commandBar_floppyDisk.

Much easier to see a visual difference as well.

#4

I was using those, too. But when I click into a word between them and I wan to hold command+arrow to jump to the next underscore (say to highlight the word to change it or delete it quickly) underscores are treated as part of the work or string… where hyphens will act more like a space or break in text and so you can jump quickly from one word to the next. My workflow is like this…

click anywhere in widget name
hold CTRL/CMD and use arrow keys to jump to the start or end of a particular word such as “save” in “command-commandBar–save”
adding shift to my modifier (so now SHIFT+CMD+Arrow) I can select just that word (the name of the object that is unique being ‘save’) to “delete”
now the widget name reads as “command-commandBar–delete”

I am using the “–” to denote what comes after it as being the object’s unique ID versus what comes before as the object type/structure/layout shorthand.

PROBLEM: In using the underscore, you have to use the mouse to click directly onto the spot you want to start the cursor, then hold shift, then click the end of the word (or drag along the text with RIGHT-CLICK)

PROBLEM: if I don’t use underscore, that problem is solved, but now I don’t have the visual cue of the double hyphen to guide my eye to the unique ID i’ve established for the widget.

I totally get autocorrecting to an extended hyphen in most cases. But every other UI / OS gives you the option to customize autocorrections like that, or turn them off completely. Axure doesn’t have any preferences specifically available for modifier keys, autocorrect, or anything else that might help with either problem.

It’s just frustrating because it gives us the ability to use freeform text to create a naming system that makes sense to the user, and I can even search the widget names based on something like “–” to find unique objects, or even “–save” to find that quickly as opposed to “–savingModal”.

I guess it’s a niche experience issue. I just find it strange when a UI is like, “here’s an open field to enter something custom that makes sense to you!” and then autocorrects certain characters and gives no option to turn it off.

To me, as a UX practitioner, nearly anything that is automated by the system, should be able to be switched to a manual process (or be disabled) by the user if they wish (with some exceptions where the automation is necessary to the core function of the workflow or something).