If you choose the modify character translation tables operation from the main menu, LifeLines displays the character translation menu:
Which character mapping do you want to edit? e Editor to Internal mapping m Internal to Editor mapping i GEDCOM to Internal mapping x Internal to GEDCOM mapping d Internal to Display mapping r Internal to Report mapping q Return to main menu
LifeLines has little built-in knowledge of character codes. If you use 7-bit ASCII characters you will not encounter problems. However, many European and other languages require additional characters, and there are many 8-bit and other schemes for encoding those characters. LifeLines knows about none of them. However, LifeLines provides a number of character translation features you can use to manage character translation.
LifeLines provides facilities for mapping between characters whenever a data record changes form. LifeLines supports four forms:
for records in the database
for records being edited
for records being displayed
for records written to output file
When converting text from one form to another LifeLines normally does not convert characters codes. You may, however, override this default behavior by creating translation tables that LifeLines will use when converting between forms. There are six translation tables you may define. The following table shows the six tables and describes when they are applied:
when converting from internal, database form to editor form
when converting from editor form back to internal, database form
when reading GEDCOM input records and writing them to database
when writing internal database records to external GEDCOM file
when displaying a record in a browsing mode display screen
when writing internal database records to external report file
After you select a translation table you are placed in the editor to edit the table. Translation tables are made up of lines that look like:
pattern patternwhere a tab separates the patterns. Each pattern is an arbitrary sequence of verbatim ASCII characters and escape sequences. Translation occurs by finding all occurrences that match left patterns and replacing them with the corresponding right patterns.
There are five escape mechanisms used in patterns:
nnn is a decimal character value
hh is a hexadecimal character value
represents the # character
represents the $ character
represents the \ character
The character translation feature is not fully tested, and not all translations are currently implemented.