Overview
An adaptation of Tofu Detective as a Synthesis Patcher. While Tofu Detective has the capability to ouput a patch mod plugin, I wanted to have a way for users like myself who already use Synthesis in their workflow to be able to benefit.

This patcher is meant to be simpler and more straightforward than Tofu Detective, but does not offer all of the features Tofu Detective does as a standalone utility. See below for details.

What this will do

• Convert any invalid characters found in dialogue text and item names to the equivalent character that the game will display
  

• Trim excess whitespace from strings (configurable, see below)
  

Text fields that are null (not set in the record) or all whitespace are ignored.

What this will not do

• Fix any typos or other grammatical errors present in the text (see the example from Beyond Reach in the images)
  

Usage
NOTE: This page exists to make reporting bugs and giving feedback easier for those who don't have a Github presence. Please do not ask general questions about how to install or use Synthesis. If you're unfamiliar with Synthesis, you can find a guide here and ask in the Mutagen/Synthesis Discord if you need help.

• Install Synthesis (instructions)
• Add to your Synthesis pipeline using the patcher browser or by double-clicking on the .synth file in the archive.
  

• I strongly recommend using Tag versioning with Auto checked (should already be set when adding the patcher). This will use the latest release version instead of main branch. While I try to keep main branch stable, using tags is still better for a consistent experience.
  

The patcher will log which records it updated. These can be viewed in the Synthesis log files or in the UI itself.

Available Patcher Settings
Mods to exclude: A list of modkeys (i.e. plugin filenames) to exclude from patching. Winning records from these mods will be skipped.
Trim whitespace: Trims excess whitespace from text in addition to fixing invalid characters. Default is on, but if you don't want the patcher to do this you can turn it off.

• Since trimming whitespace also means the patcher will touch a lot more records, you can also try turning this off if you get a TooManyMasters error in your Synthesis group/pipeline.
  

• For example, in my own setup (~1500 plugins) the difference is ~4600 records changed with trimming vs 75 without
  

Caveats
Like Tofu Detective, this patcher is English-centric and will not work for translations. I also do not have plans to support multiple languages. You can configure the patcher to skip any translation plugins by adding them to the Mods to exclude list in the patcher settings.

Unlike Tofu Detective, the patcher will not provide detailed information about what was changed for each record (i.e. excess whitespace trimmed vs invalid chars). It will track and log the total number of records patched, but will not provide a breakdown of record types or any other statistics.

Should I use this or Tofu Detective?
If you want more detailed information about each record, what is wrong with it, or to inspect the text, use Tofu Detective. If you just want to fix/cleanup records across your load order, use this patcher.

Reporting Bugs/Issues
If you have a Github account, I would prefer you raise an issue there. That is how I track things, but if you don't use Github please post in the Bugs section here on Nexus, and I will add the issue to the repo on Github.

Please include the following to help me help you:
- Synthesis version used
- Synthesis log file(s) - upload to pastebin site if posting to Nexus, otherwise they can be attached to Github issues
- Plugins.txt - upload to pastebin site if posting to Nexus, otherwise they can be attached to Github issues
- Specific record(s) that are problematic
   - xEdit screenshots not required, but appreciated