CharEntry 1.2 review

CharEntry is a tool for inserting non-ascii characters into text, with particular emphasis on linguistic notation. CharEntry provi

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 33K Developer: Bill Poser

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CharEntry is a tool for inserting non-ascii characters into text, with particular emphasis on linguistic notation.

CharEntry provides charts of the consonants, vowels, and diacritics of the International Phonetic Alphabet as well as chart of precomposed accented characters. Clicking on a character inserts it into a text region, the contents of which may be saved to a file or copied and pasted elsewhere.

A widget for inserting characters by Unicode codepoint is also provided. Furthermore, it is possible to read from a file the definition of a custom character chart. Here is an Armenian chart constructed from the definition in a file.

Title(|Columns)(|Font Family)(|Font Size)

followed by one line for each entry in the chart, each line consisting of a set of characters followed by a gloss, separated by a | symbol. The set of characters is of the form:

U+(:U+)

where U represents a Unicode codepoint with u escape, e.g. u00E9. If the colon is present, it separates two alternative character strings. The first character string will be inserted by a left-click; the second alternative will be inserted by a right-click.

GreekLower defines a chart for the lower-case Greek letters only. Clicking on a button with the left mouse button inserts the character into the current insertion target.

Armenian illustrates a more complex chart definition. It defines a chart that covers both the upper- and lower-case Armenian letters. Clicking the left mouse button over a button inserts the first alternative for that button. Clicking the right mouse button inserts the second alternative. The two alternatives are separated by a colon in the definition. Thus, in the first entry:

u0561:u0531|ayb

the pipe separates the characters from the gloss:

u0561:u0531 | ayb

while the colon separates the first alternative, u0561, from the second, u0531:

u0561 : u0531

These character widget definitions are of the form required for use in separate files. To use one directly within an init file, you must do two things:

(a) Prefix to them the line "DefineCharacterChart {";
(b) Suffix to them the line "}";

For example, here is a suitable init file command for creating a lower-case Greek alphabet chart:

DefineCharacterChart {
Greek|6
u03B1|alpha
u03B2|beta
u03B3|gamma
u03B4|delta
u03B5|epsilon
u03B6|zeta
u03B7|eta
u03B8|thetafile:///root/Desktop/ArmenianCustom.jpg
u03B9|iota
u03BA|kappa
u03BB|lamda
u03BC|mu
u03BD|nu
u03BE|xi
u03BF|omicron
u03C0|pi
u03C1|rho
u03C3|sigma
u03C2|final sigma
u03C4|tau
u03C5|upsilon
u03C6|phi
u03C7|chi
u03C8|psi
u03C9|omega
u03DD|digamma
u03DE|koppa
u03E1|sampi
}

Requirements:
Tcl/Tk version 8.3 or higher
Iwidgets (Tcl/Tk library)

What's New in This Release:
A number of characters have been added to the accented letter chart.
The upper-case counterparts of the letters on the accented letter chart are now available by right-clicking.
Clicking in the entry region now returns input focus to it.