DiacriticalMarks

A small, basic library for creating and getting diacritical letters in WPF

Requirements

DiacriticalMarks is compatible with .NET 5.0 (net5.0-windows) and .NET 6.0 (net6.0-windows).

Installation

You can find the package on NuGet or install it through PackageManagement:

Install-Package DiacriticalMarks

Usage

The purpose of this library is to do basic things like:

a + ´ = á

or even:

a + ^ + ` = ầ

Using Basic Accents

You're most likely interested in using some of the following basic accents:

Accent	Mark
Circumflex	^
Grave	`
Tilde	~
Diaeresis	¨
Macron	¯
Acute	´
Cedilla	¸

If that's the case, you can simply use the AttachAccent method to attach an accent to a provided base character:

using DiacriticalMarks;


public static void Main()
{
    string result = DiacriticalMarks.AttachAccent('a', Accent.Acute);
    char diacriticalLetter = char.Parse(result);
    Console.WriteLine(diacriticalLetter);  // Prints á
}

The DiacriticalMarks namespace contains an Enum called Accent that contains:

• the circumflex accent (^)
• the grave accent (`)
• the tilde (~)
• the diaeresis (¨)
• the macron (¯)
• the acute accent (´)
• and the cedilla (¸)

Using Combining Diacritical Marks

If you need access to more, you can also use the CombiningDiacriticalMark enum which is also found in the DiacriticalMarks namespace. To use combining diacritical marks, you have access to two methods:

• AttachDiacritic
• AttachDiacritics

The CombiningDiacriticalMark enum contains 112 values, per the official document on combining diacritical marks by the Unicode Consortium.

AttachDiacritic method

The AttachDiacritic method is similar to the AttachAccent method except instead of providing an Accent, you need to provide a CombiningDiacriticalMark:

using DiacriticalMarks;


public static void Main()
{
    string result = DiacriticalMarks.AttachDiacritic('a', CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningGraveAccent);
    char diacriticalCharacter = char.Parse(result);
    Console.WriteLine(diacriticalCharacter);  // Prints 'à'
}

AttachDiacritics method

If you need to attach multiple diacritical marks to a base character, you can use the AttachDiacritics method. This method accepts a an array of CombiningDiacriticalMark:

using DiacriticalMarks;


public static void Main()
{
    CombiningDiacriticalMark[] marks = new CombiningDiacriticalMark[] { CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningBreve, CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningDotBelow };
    string result = DiacriticalMarks.AttachDiacritic('A', marks);
    char diacriticalCharacter = char.Parse(result);
    Console.WriteLine(diacriticalCharacter);  // Prints 'Ặ'
}

📝 NOTE: The order of `CombiningDiacriticalMark`s matters! For example, if the order of the `marks` variable was instead:

    { CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningDotBelow, CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningBreve }

Then you may end up with a string consisting of a 'Ạ' that has a breve ('˘') accent attached to it, which means the string will have a length of 2 instead of 1.

In other words:

'A' + new CombiningDiacriticalMark[] { CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningBreve, CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningDotBelow } = 'Ặ'

    Length = 1
    Official Unicode name = Latin Capital Letter a with Breve and Dot Below

'A' + new CombiningDiacriticalMark[] { CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningDotBelow, CombiningDiacriticalMark.CombiningBreve } = 'Ặ'

    Length = 2
    Official Unicode name = ?

If you need to find the correct order for certain characters, follow the order listed in their official Unicode names. A site that I recommend for viewing names is Unicode-Table.