ungpt

A cross-platform GUI app that converts ChatGPT's smart punctuation and symbols to plain ASCII.

Motivation

I often use ChatGPT to correct grammar and spelling errors because it's smarter than a regular spell checker.

However, it frequently outputs text containing "smart" punctuation and typographic Unicode symbols, such as:

• Em dashes (—) instead of ASCII dashes (-)
• Curly quotes (“ ” ‘ ’) instead of straight quotes (" ')
• Ellipses (…) instead of three dots (...)

Manually fixing these with Find & Replace is tedious. I do it so often that I decided to build a small app to automate the process.

I chose SFML and ImGui because I wanted to cobble something together quickly.

Features

• Written in modern C++ (C++20).

Tested Systems

This project has been tested on the following system:

• macOS 15.7 (Sequoia)

Automated tests are also run on the latest versions of macOS, GNU/Linux, and Windows using GitHub Actions.

Pre-built Binaries

Pre-built binaries are available for macOS (ARM64), GNU/Linux (x86_64), and Windows (x86_64). You can download the latest version from the Releases page.

To remove the quarantine attribute on macOS, use the following commands:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ungpt-macos-arm64.app
chmod +x ungpt-macos-arm64.app

On Windows, the OS may warn you that the binary is unsigned. You can bypass this warning by clicking "More info" and then "Run anyway".

Requirements

To build and run this project, you'll need:

• C++20 or higher
• CMake

Build

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ryouze/ungpt.git

2. Generate the build system:

   cd ungpt
   mkdir build && cd build
   cmake ..

   The default configuration (cmake ..) is recommended for most users and is also used by CI/CD to build the project.

   However, the build configuration can be customized using the following options:

   • ENABLE_COMPILE_FLAGS (default: ON) - Enables strict compiler warnings and treats warnings as errors. When enabled, any compiler warning causes the build to fail. Disable this option if warnings cause compilation issues.
   • ENABLE_STRIP (default: ON) - Strips debug symbols from Release builds to reduce binary size. Disable this option to preserve debugging information. Only affects Release builds.
   • ENABLE_LTO (default: ON) - Enables Link Time Optimization for Release builds, which can produce smaller and faster binaries. It is automatically disabled if the compiler does not support LTO.
   • ENABLE_CCACHE (default: ON) - Uses ccache, if installed, to speed up rebuilds. If ccache is unavailable, the build continues without it.
   • BUILD_TESTS (default: OFF) - Builds unit tests alongside the main executable. See Testing for usage.

   For example, to disable strict compiler flags and LTO:

   cmake .. -DENABLE_COMPILE_FLAGS=OFF -DENABLE_LTO=OFF

3. Compile the project:

   cmake --build . --parallel

After a successful build, you can run the program using ./ungpt (open ungpt.app on macOS). However, installing the program is recommended so that it can be run from any directory. See the Install section below.

Tip

The build type is set to Release by default. To build in Debug mode, use cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug.

Install

If you haven't already built the project, follow the steps in the Build section and make sure you are in the build directory.

To install the program, use the following command:

sudo cmake --install .

On macOS, this installs the program to /Applications. You can then run ungpt.app from Launchpad, Spotlight, or by double-clicking the app in Finder.

Usage

1. Click Paste to load text from the clipboard.
2. Click Normalize to modify the text in place.
3. Click Copy to write the text to the clipboard.

Development

Logging

The application uses spdlog for logging.

In Debug builds, the logging level is set to debug by default, which produces verbose output. In Release builds, it remains at the default info level, which displays only informational messages and warnings.

Note

While cmake/External.cmake defines SPDLOG_ACTIVE_LEVEL=SPDLOG_LEVEL_DEBUG in Debug builds, this only affects compile-time filtering. Runtime verbosity is controlled by spdlog::set_level(), which is called in main.cpp to enable debug-level messages.

Testing

Tests are included in the project but are not built by default.

To enable and build the tests manually, run the following commands from the build directory:

cmake .. -DBUILD_TESTS=ON
cmake --build . --parallel
ctest --verbose

Credits

Libraries:

• Simple and Fast Multimedia Library - Windowing, graphics, input, etc.
• Dear ImGui - Immediate-mode GUI.
• ImGui-SFML - ImGui-to-SFML binding.
• snitch - Unit-testing framework.
• spdlog - Logging library.

Graphics:

• Spelling Alphabet - Application icon.