An idea for a new end-user-friendly interface for keying Unicode characters

Google street view provides some amazing facilities.

I am wondering if Google street view technology, with a few additions, could be applied so as to produce a new end-user-friendly interface for keying Unicode characters.

Google street view includes simulations of some art galleries.

I am thinking of the possibility of a web-based facility, accessible, as desired, either directly from a link in a web browser, or from a link from within a desktop publishing program, to an art gallery simulation.

The art gallery simulation could either be based on images gathered from a real world art gallery or on images gathered from a virtual world model of an art gallery.

An end user could then move around in the simulation and move from room to room, with guidance from signs, as in a real art gallery.

Google street view includes superimposed logos upon which an end user can click.

For example, the following, where clicking causes a photograph to be displayed. The superimposed logos disappear if the mouse unit is left untouched for a short time.

http://maps.google.com/?ll=43.467937,11.043947&spn=0.001413,0.002248&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=43.467984,11.042802&panoid=uEZ7GlCYA2tV1i8u1i_A8Q&cbp=12,83.14,,0,-12.04

Would it be possible to have many superimposed logos in the simulated art gallery and for those superimposed logos each to be such that clicking upon it would add a Unicode character, or a sequence of Unicode characters, as appropriate, into a character buffer?

This is just the start of an idea and I cannot implement it on my own.

I am putting the idea forward in the hope that it might be regarded as a useful idea and that it could be developed into a widely available and useful free facility on the web.

Readers are welcome to comment and hopefully extend and improve the idea please.

William Overington

21 February 2013
Received on Thu Feb 21 2013 - 06:13:59 CST