Combination Letters

In some locales, two or more characters in a string must be considered as a single sorting element. For example, ch is two characters, but in traditional Spanish they must be considered as a unit during a sort.

Combination letters are known as contracting characters in a multilingual linguistic sort.

The combination letters table shows:

• The Unicode value (UTF-16) of the first character (Char1)
• The glyph for the first character (Char1 Glyph)
• The Unicode value (UTF-16) of the second character (Char2)
• The glyph for the second character (Char2 Glyph)
• The major sort value for the combined characters
• The minor sort value for the combined characters

For example, the entry for ch in Spanish appears as follows:

Char1	Char1 Glyph	Char2	Char2 Glyph	Major Sort	Minor Sort
\u0063	c	\u0068	h	32	3

Searching for Combination Letters

You can search for an existing combination letter:

1. Click Search. The Table Search dialog box will appear.
2. Enter the local character or the glyph of either character in the combination letter or enter one of the sort values in the appropriate field of the Table Search dialog box.
3. Click Go.

Adding, Modifying, and Deleting Information

You can add a combination letter to the sort:

1. Click New.
2. Specify the local character value and the glyph for the first and second characters and the major and minor sort values of the combination letter in the appropriate fields of the stationary dialog box.
3. Click Add.

You can modify existing information:

1. Click the row that you want to modify. It will appear in the stationary dialog box.
2. Make the desired changes.
3. Click Modify.

You can delete a row:

1. Click the row that you want to delete. It will appear in the stationary dialog box.
2. Click Delete.

To save information that you have changed or added, see Defining a New Monolingual Linguistic Sort.