DICTIONARY PROPERTIES

The Properties of a Dictionary are normally set at the time of its creation. If you forget to do this, or if you want to alter a Property, this function will allow you to do so. The dialog has the following controls:-
  • Word Length Specification.
    Magnum Opus can generate a specification for the length of the word as you enter it into the Dictionary Edit function. The specification will automatically appear in the Clue input field when you press Enter after typing in the new Word. You can elect to not insert a length specification at all, you can have it entered for all words, or you can have it entered only for multi-words such as RED HERRING. For RED HERRING the length specification will appear as (3,7). If the multi-word is RED-HOT then the length specification will be (3-3).

  • Case Control.
    When you enter a Word during Dictionary Editing, Magnum Opus will convert that word to either all Uppercase Letters or all Lowercase letters. You can control this behavior using the two radio buttons available under Case Control.

  • Auxiliary Keyboard.
    Magnum Opus uses the Unicode character set which means that puzzles can be created in virtually any language. A typical computer keyboard caters for only a limited number of characters, and so a facility is required to enable the vast array of Unicode characters to be entered into a Magnum Opus dictionary. This is done by means of an Auxiliary Keyboard which is an array of 256 characters selected from Unicode and displayed as part of the Dictionary Edit screen. When one of these characters is required in either a Word or a clue, a single mouse click on the required character will enter that character into the dictionary at the current insertion point. This behavior is selected separately for each dictionary, so that each dictionary may be associated with a different character set, or it may simply default to the one provided by the computer keyboard. It is controlled using the following three options:-

    • Connect Keyboard.
      Select this check-box if you want an Auxiliary Keyboard to be connected.

    • Select Alphabet.
      This combo-box provides quick access to the seven most commonly used character sets. All seven of these character sets appear to be available in both iMac and Windows operating systems.

    • Other Alphabets.
      Enter a number between 1 and 255 into this text field to select any of the the other character pages which may or may not be available, depending on the OS you are using. Any non-zero number entered here will over-ride the selection made in the combo-box described above. You will probably prefer to use the more convenient combo-box selection, so you should enter a zero here.