Re: French accented letters (was: Re: Monetary decimal separators)

From: tim@higgys4.com
Date: Mon Sep 19 2005 - 09:44:14 CDT

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    Hi All:

     Here's a solution: We have a newkeypad that places each accented letter on a display above its ownunique key (for French or Spanish or other languages, at the selectionof the user). This means the keypad displays all accented lettersall the time. To get a capital with an accent, th user presseseither shift and the key, or only the key for slightly longer (withoutpressing shift - a "long press caps"). There is no need for ctl,alt or other key combinations, and no need to memorize key combinationswith no visual cue as to what accented letter you are getting. Itenables all this with a smaller footprint and fewer keys than a QWERTYkeyboard.
     Currently, a "virtual" version of this keypad isavailable, which is helpful immediately because the keypad sits in acorner of your screen (and can be minimized), so you can simply useyour mouse to select and enter any accented letter, then go on typingyour usual way. We're working on getting a physical version outas soon as possible.
     This is our company's keypad, but since it seemsdirectly relevant to this conversation, I thought I would bring it toyour attention (in conformity with this Unicode email list policies).
     (The keypad is designed, in addition to French andSpanish, to provide a new and much more effective ways to give peopleaccess directly to and all the languages enabled by Unicode (we'vebegun this process, but it is in its early stage - a hardware versionof the keypad will be open architecture so anyone expert in a languagecan enable it to display that language's components above each key).)
     You can find more information, and download this "virtual" keypad at www.yuvee.com.

    Best regards,

    Tim Higginson



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