unicode-to-plain-text

unicode-to-plain-text

Convert fancy Unicode text to plain ASCII with smart language preservation

Install

npm i unicode-to-plain-text

Usage

Basic usage:

import { toPlainText } from 'unicode-to-plain-text'

// Mathematical styles
toPlainText('𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝') // => 'Hello World'

// Enclosed characters
toPlainText('🅣🅔🅢🅣') // => 'TEST'

// Fullwidth forms
toPlainText('ＨＥＬＬＯ') // => 'HELLO'

Language preservation:

// Real languages are automatically preserved
toPlainText('Hello Γεια σας')  // => 'Hello Γεια σας' (Greek preserved)
toPlainText('Test Привет')     // => 'Test Привет' (Cyrillic preserved)

// But lookalike characters are converted
toPlainText('Α test')  // => 'A test' (Greek Alpha → Latin A)

Custom pipelines:

import {
  pipe,
  handleUpsideDown,
  mapCharacters,
  normalizeUnicode,
  removeDecorations,
  normalizeWhitespace,
  normalizeCasing
} from 'unicode-to-plain-text'

// Create a custom pipeline
const customTransform = pipe(
  handleUpsideDown,
  mapCharacters,
  normalizeUnicode,
  removeDecorations,
  normalizeWhitespace
)

const result = customTransform('𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓')

API

toPlainText(text, options?)

Converts fancy Unicode text to plain ASCII

Property	Type	Description
text	string	Input text with Unicode characters
options	object	Optional configuration object

Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
normalizeSpaces	boolean	true	Collapse multiple spaces and trim whitespace
skipEmoji	boolean	false	Preserve emoji characters (still removes other decorations like box drawing, arrows)

Examples

// Default behavior - emojis removed
toPlainText('Hello 🎉 World') // => 'Hello World'

// Preserve emojis
toPlainText('Hello 🎉 World', { skipEmoji: true }) // => 'Hello 🎉 World'

// Preserve spacing
toPlainText('Hello   World', { normalizeSpaces: false }) // => 'Hello   World'

// Combined options
toPlainText('𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨  🎉  𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝', { skipEmoji: true, normalizeSpaces: false })
// => 'Hello  🎉  World'

Returns a plain ASCII string with normalized whitespace and casing

Individual Functions

• handleUpsideDown(text) - Reverses upside-down text
• mapCharacters(text) - Maps Unicode to ASCII equivalents
• normalizeUnicode(text) - Removes diacritics from Latin text
• removeDecorations(text) - Removes emojis and decorations
• normalizeWhitespace(text) - Normalizes and trims whitespace
• normalizeCasing(text) - Normalizes inconsistent casing
• pipe(...fns) - Composes functions into a pipeline

License

Apache-2.0