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Dead character properties

Dead character editing available only in Full edition.

Each character from the Dead character list has certain properties that need to be defined. The central pane of the Dead character editor shows detailed information for the currently selected dead character, and makes it possible to edit its attributes:

• Dead character's name is displayed in the Name field. This name's function is purely descriptive, and has no impact on the dead character's behavior. It can be changed in the Enter dead key name popup dialog, which is accessed through the ... button on the right of the "Name" field.
• The list Transformation pairs for current dead character displays all transformations defined for the current dead character. A transformation is defined by a pair of Unicode values: the first is a "plain" character, and the second is a composite diacritic character which is generated by the "plain" character when it is pressed just after the dead character.

The current transformation pair's attributes are shown in the fields Transforms and Into. The former represents the original, "plain" character, and the latter is the result of applying the dead character to the original one.

Both Transforms and Into fields are editable: their Unicode character can be defined either by entering a 4-digit code, or by dragging from the Unicode palette and dropping onto the field.

A new transformation pair is created by dragging a character from the Unicode palette and dropping it onto the Transformation pairs for current dead char list. The dropped character appears as the original, Transforms value. Unless a "standard" character is dropped, the transformed Into character is initialized to 003F (?) and needs to be defined by hand.

The current transformation pair can be deleted using the Delete pair button. Since the transformation list cannot be empty, the button is enabled only if the list contains more than one transformation.

The primary purpose of the Current dead char field is informational, but since it is read only it can also be used to quickly change the dead character itself, while keeping all the existing mapping. Without this function, it would be very difficult to assign an existing set of dead transformation to a different Unicode character: all Transforms / Into pairs would have to be recreated by hand.

If the old dead character is mapped to high-level key combinations, the integrity of these mappings is preserved by automatically updating them to the new dead character.

If the new character already exists as a dead character with its own set of transformation pairs, the Resolve dead conflict dialog box will appear, in which you can fine-tune how the two dead characters are combined into a single one.

• Option Replace with contents of <current dead char> will completely erase old contents of the newly entered dead character, and assign it the transformation pairs of the current dead char.
• Choosing Merge contents of <current dead char> and <new dead char> will merge the transformation pair lists belonging to the current and newly entered character.

If "Merge contents" is chosen, two additional radio buttons are available under label In case of merge conflict choose contents of:. They serve to resolve a conflict which arises if both dead characters transform the same base (Transforms) character into different combined (Into) characters. In this case, only one Into value can make it to the merged list and the radio buttons define which one.

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