Re: Polyglot keyboards

From: Marcel Schneider <charupdate_at_orange.fr>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2016 01:09:42 +0200 (CEST)

On Tue, 10 May 2016 12:10:35 +0200, Otto Stolz wrote:

> […] the German standard
> DIN 2137:2012-06 defines a “T2” layout which is meant
> for all official, Latin-based orthographies worldwide, and
> additionally for the Latin-based minority languages of Germany
> and Austria. The layout is based on the traditional QWERTZU layout
> for German and Austrian keyboards (which is now dubbed “T1”).
> Cf. .
>
> There is also a “T3” layout defined which comprises all characters
> mentioned in ISO/IEC 9995-3:2010.

Wasnʼt it the other way round? As far as I remember the sources,
to stick with the tradition of referring to an ISO subset of Unicode
(MES-1 for ISO/IEC 9995-3:2002), the German NB urged ISO to adopt
a new subset tailored for the then on-coming ISO/IEC 9995-3:2010,
that in turn was intended to hold the invoked DIN 2137:2012, which
was overflowing the ISO keyboard framework on other sides too,
leading to the addition of part 11 past year.

As of the new Unicode subsetʼs extent, there were other problems
raised through its being tailored for a given keyboard layout
that did not make full use of the existing keyboard resources
of the mainstream operating system. As a result, several Latin letters
are missing, ending up in a twilighty mix of support and unsupport
across Latin script using continents. While claiming coverage of
several African and American languages, again several African and
American languages are unsupported, notably through the lack
of Ɛ, Ɔ, Ʌ. Remember that Bamanankan is an official language of Mali.

Having promised not to stay discussing keyboard layouts on
the Unicode List, I canʼt help recalling in this *new* thread
the harm done to Latin script using communities by excluding
their alphabets from an internationally designed keyboard standard
in the era of globalisation.

Everybody on this List remembers the oddities that have followed
the launch of the Multilingual Latin Subset, redubbed so on the spot
from the originally proposed “Multilingual International Subset” for
its not covering Greek nor Cyrillic, and subsequently annotated
on demand of the ANSI, initiated by a paper from Denis Jacquerye,
as not covering all Latin script using languages, in order to avoid
misleading future font designers.

Marcel
Received on Tue May 10 2016 - 18:10:44 CDT

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