Ampersand

HTML entity tools for Nova, modelled on TextMate 2's entity commands.

The menu — Command-Shift-7

In TextMate 2 these commands all shared one key equivalent, so pressing it popped
up a numbered menu. Ampersand keeps that: select some text, press
⌘⇧7 (on a US keyboard, literally ⌘&), and choose by number.

1. Convert Selection to Entities
2. Convert Selection to Entities Excl. Tags
3. Insert Entity…
4. URL Escape Selection
5. URL Unescape Selection
6. Encrypt Selection (ROT 13)
7. Strip HTML Tags from Selection
8. Convert Entities to Characters

Every command is also listed individually in the Ampersand submenu of the
editor's contextual menu, and can be given its own shortcut under
Nova ▸ Settings ▸ Key Bindings.

Commands

Convert Selection to Entities

Treats the selection as literal text and encodes everything that needs it —
&, <, >, ", and every non-ASCII character. Use this when you want to
show markup rather than render it.

<p>café & "x"</p>   →   &lt;p&gt;caf&eacute; &amp; &quot;x&quot;&lt;/p&gt;

Convert Selection to Entities Excl. Tags

Treats the selection as HTML. Tags, comments and already-encoded entities are
left exactly as they are; only the text content is encoded. This is the one you
want for encoding a page's prose without touching its markup.

<p class="x">café — naïve</p>   →   <p class="x">caf&eacute; &mdash; na&iuml;ve</p>
<b>R&amp;D & Co.</b>            →   <b>R&amp;D &amp; Co.</b>

Note how the existing & isn't double-encoded, while the bare & is.

Convert Entities to Characters

Decodes entities back to characters — named (é), decimal (é) and
hexadecimal (é). Unrecognised entities are left untouched.

Insert Entity…

Opens a searchable palette of all 253 named entities. Search by name (copy),
by the character itself (©), or by code point (U+00A9).

URL Escape / Unescape Selection

Percent-encodes and decodes the selection.

Encrypt Selection (ROT 13)

Rotates letters by 13; run it twice to get back where you started.

Strip HTML Tags from Selection

Removes tags, comments, CDATA and doctypes, leaving the text content.

Notes

• Works with multiple selections — each one is transformed independently.
• Characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane (emoji, for example) encode
  correctly as a single numeric entity: 😀 → 😀.
• Every edit goes through Nova's editor API; nothing is typed or simulated.
• Command-Shift-7 opens the menu. Individual commands have no default binding;
  assign your own under Nova ▸ Settings ▸ Key Bindings.

Changelog

1.0

Initial release. TextMate-style HTML entity tools: convert a selection to
entities (with a variant that leaves tags and existing entities untouched),
convert entities back to characters, insert an entity from a searchable palette,
URL escape/unescape, ROT 13, and strip HTML tags.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 PureBlend Corporation

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in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
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