Text transforms in QuickLauncher

[michaelbeijer]

Summary

QuickLauncher now supports text transforms — local find-and-replace operations that run directly on the active target segment without calling an AI provider. This opens the door to a lightweight scripting layer inside Supervertaler for Trados.

What's implemented (v4.18.27)

• New prompt type: type: transform — set this in the YAML frontmatter to mark a prompt as a text transform instead of an AI prompt
• Find/replace rules in the content body — simple find: / replace: pairs with \uXXXX Unicode escape support and # comments
• Built-in "Strip U+2028" transform — removes invisible Unicode LINE SEPARATOR (U+2028) and PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR (U+2029) characters from the target segment; seeded automatically in QuickLauncher/Text operations/
• Executed via ProcessSegmentPair — changes are committed through the Trados document model, preserving all formatting tags (bold, italic, etc.)
• Double-space collapsing — consecutive spaces left after replacements are collapsed to a single space
• Clipboard copy — the cleaned target text is automatically copied to the clipboard after a transform runs
• MessageBox feedback — shows how many replacements were applied (or "No matches found")
• Works with keyboard slots — transforms can be assigned to Ctrl+Alt+1–0 shortcuts like any other QuickLauncher prompt

Content body format

# Comments start with #
# Each rule is a find:/replace: pair. Use \uXXXX for Unicode escapes.

find: "\u2028"
replace: " "

find: "\u2029"
replace: " "

Future directions

Short term

• Regex support (regex: instead of find:)
• Conditional rules (if: / else:)
• Built-in post-processing flags (normalize_spaces: true, trim: true)
• More built-in transforms (strip zero-width spaces, normalise quotes, etc.)

Medium term

• Variable support inside transforms ({{TARGET_SEGMENT}}, {{SOURCE_SEGMENT}})
• Ctrl+, picker for inserting variables and Unicode escapes
• Visual rule builder in the Prompt Editor (dropdown-based, like KnowBrainer's command builder)
• Preview panel showing before/after when editing a transform

Long term

• Full scripting support (C# snippets or a DSL)
• Voice command integration — trigger transforms and QuickLauncher prompts by voice
• Batch mode — apply a transform across all segments or filtered segments
• Chain transforms — run multiple transforms in sequence

Architecture

Text transforms reuse the existing QuickLauncher infrastructure:

• PromptTemplate.IsTransform — computed from type: transform in YAML frontmatter
• PromptTemplate.Replacements — List<TextReplacement> parsed from the content body by PromptLibrary.ParseTransformContent()
• QuickLauncherAction and QuickLauncherSlotRunner detect transforms and call AiAssistantViewPart.RunTextTransform() instead of sending to the AI
• RunTextTransform() uses IStudioDocument.ProcessSegmentPair() to modify IText nodes in-place, preserving inline formatting tags

Related

• U+2028/U+2029 stripping in AI input (v4.18.26) — strips these characters before sending to AI providers
• Batch size spinner (v4.18.26) — exposed the BatchSize setting in AI Settings