From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 12:23:39 EDT
Thomas Milo <t dot milo at chello dot nl> wrote:
> One cannot expect any Dutch user to move away from the standard US
> keyboard. Nor would they ever start using alt-grrr or alt+xxxxx for
> a frequent everyday character.
If Dutch users won't change away from the US keyboard -- remember, I'm
not asking them to change their hardware, just the driver -- then they
will continue not to have direct keyboard support for U+0132 and U+0133.
American users are not pleading for an easier way to type precomposed IJ
and ij digraphs.
Users in the rest of Europe are accustomed to using AltGr for common
characters. Ask any French, German, or Italian user how she types the @
sign or the euro sign. The Microsoft Dutch keyboard (which I know you
said isn't used) already defines several AltGr keys.
I agree that Alt+xxxxx is not suitable for commonly used characters,
especially if the xxxxx is a decimal number. ISO 9995 specifies a
framework for defining hexadecimal input sequences, which is a boon for
entering the occasional IPA character or dingbat, but ordinary users
should not have to do that for common letters.
> To summarize: Dutch orthography has a grapheme/digraph in that used to
> be a separate key - a character - on Dutch typewriters.
Which key was it?
> The reality is
> that the computer community has not yet produced an equivalent
> solution to date. When it does so, sooner or later, it will be in a
> manner that does not break rules, habits or backward compatibility.
In that case, the layout of letter keys on Dutch computer keyboards
should match the Dutch typewriter layout, and users should use that
keyboard, not the US-English one.
> The requirements are that IJ
>
> - cannot be hyphenated
> - cannot be broken up in vertical text
> - must be capitalized simultaneously
> - has an option to sort with I or Y (this is the tricky one)
> - has a option to be a ligature
> - must remain equivalent with I+J
All of these are possible within the framework of Unicode, without
requiring the precomposed digraph characters U+0132 and U+0133.
(Sorting is *not* the tricky one, BTW; almost every language needs some
kind of custom sorting beyond straight code-point order.)
> The mission is to find a solution that falls in line with general
> Unicode - if necessary long term - architecture. From a user's
> perspective would be nice if a keyed sequence of I+J could produce a
> Unicode IJ, but that's just one way of doing it. If it can be achieved
> by adjusting or adding tables, that's fine, too. The bottom line is
> that IJ behaviour _must_ be supported, one way or another.
Agreed. Dutch-specific IJ behavior can and should be supported. It
just doesn't require the use of the compatibility characters, that's
all.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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