Composing unicode characters in Java?

Question

I'm working on a random name generator to be used in a game I'm developing, the problem is there are different species with different naming styles, and I would like a single name generator to work with all of them. I have part one of this problem sorted - the name generator uses a series of templates, one set for each species of player/NPC.

The main problem I have is some vowels need to have a randomly selected accent mark. I have searched and searched, but I cannot find a way to randomly select a character and then apply an accent mark to it. So, what are the ways one can compose an accented letter by selecting the letter and then applying an accent mark to it?

Answer 1

Unicode has 'combining' characters representing most types of accents. It would be pretty easy to randomly select a combining character from an array of combining characters you create. Then you could just put whatever accents you have on any characters you like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combining_character

Since these are represented by codepoints you can treat them as a character on their own:

String s = "a" + "\u0300"; // latin lowercase letter a + combining grave accent
char combining_grave_accent = '\u0300';

Answer 2

Hmm perhaps use a 2d array and create a conversion table which will have 2 columns and how many ever rows(how many ever accented chars there are), now in the 1st column store the every accented value and in the second store the value un-accented ie a,e,i,o,u and when you generate a vowel for the name you can randomly choose whether to accent it or not, and if you choose to accent it you will iterate through the 2d array get all accented values that use 'a' or whatever and by getting and checking values in the 2nd column (so that all accented a's are picked) of the array then randomly pick one to use...

Thats the long way around, i know of no shortcut in java for this.

EDIT: here is some code to match what i suggested:

import java.util.ArrayList;

/**
 *
 * @author David
 */
public class JavaApplication145 {

    static char[][] chars = new char[6][6];

    /**
     * @param args the command line arguments
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        createConversionTable();

        char c = 'u';

        ArrayList<String> charsList = getAccentedChar(c);

        for (int i = 0; i < charsList.size(); i++) {
            System.out.println(charsList.get(i));
        }

    }

    private static void createConversionTable() {
        chars[0] = new char[]{'ù', 'ü', 'é', 'ê', 'ä', 'à'};
        chars[1] = new char[]{'u', 'u', 'e', 'e', 'a', 'a'};
    }

    private static ArrayList getAccentedChar(char c) {

        ArrayList<String> charsList = new ArrayList<>();

        for (int i = 0; i < chars[0].length; i++) {

            for (int x = 0; x < chars[1].length; x++) {

                if (chars[i][x] == c) {
                    charsList.add(chars[i - 1][x] + "");
                }

            }
        }
        return charsList;
    }
}

Answer 3

Needed the same thing, so I ended up making this:

        /**
 * Given a letter and an accent, return the char with the accent included.
 * 
 * @param accentCode: The accent char; i.e '~', '´';
 * @param letter: Letter to put accent in it.
 * @return: Char with {@code letter} with accent if it was a valid letter.
 */
public static int getAccent(char accentChar, int letter) {
    int index = 0;
    boolean upperCase = false;
    for (char vogal : vogalList) {
        if (letter == vogal) {
            if (index >= 5) {
                index -= 5;
                upperCase = true;
            }
            for (int accentType = 0; accentType < convertTable.length; accentType++) {
                if (convertTable[accentType][0] == accentChar) {
                    char converted = convertTable[accentType][index + 1];
                    if (converted != '-') {
                        if (upperCase)
                            converted = Character.toUpperCase(converted);

                        return converted;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        index++;
    }
    return letter;
}

/**
 * Verify if {@code charID} is an accent character;
 * 
 * @param charID: Character code id to be verified.
 * @return: true in case {@code charID} is an accent character id.
 */
public static boolean isAccent(int charID) {
    for (int i = 0; i < convertTable.length; i++) {
        if (convertTable[i][0] == charID)
            return true;
    }
    return false;
}

private static final char[] vogalList = { 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'A', 'E', 'I', 'O', 'U' };
private static final char[][] convertTable = { { '´', 'á', 'é', 'í', 'ó', 'ú' }, { '`', 'à', 'è', 'ì', 'ò', 'ù' }, { '^', 'â', 'ê', 'î', 'ô', 'û' }, { '~', 'ã', '-', '-', 'õ', '-' }, { '¨', 'ä', 'ë', 'ï', 'ö', 'ü' } };