How to convert fancy/artistic unicode text to ASCII?

Question

I have a unicode string like "𝖙𝖍𝖚𝖌 𝖑𝖎𝖋𝖊" and would like to convert it to the ASCII form "thug life".

I know I can achieve this in Python by

import unidecode
print(unidecode.unidecode('𝖙𝖍𝖚𝖌 𝖑𝖎𝖋𝖊'))
// thug life

However, this would asciify also other unicode characters (such as Chinese/Japanese characters, emojis, accented characters, etc.), which I want to preserve.

Is there a way to detect these type of "artistic" unicode characters?

Some more examples:

𝓽𝓱𝓾𝓰 𝓵𝓲𝓯𝓮

𝓉𝒽𝓊𝑔 𝓁𝒾𝒻𝑒

𝕥𝕙𝕦𝕘 𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕖

ｔｈｕｇ ｌｉｆｅ

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

import unicodedata
strings = [
  '???? ????',
  '???? ????',
  '???? ????',
  '???? ????',
  '???? ????']
for x in strings:
  print(unicodedata.normalize( 'NFKC', x), x)

Output: .\62803325.py

thug life ???? ????
thug life ???? ????
thug life ???? ????
thug life ???? ????
thug life ???? ????

Resources:

• unicodedata — Unicode Database
• Normalization forms for Unicode text