RE: List of Latin characters which look the same but are encoded differently

From: Erkki I. Kolehmainen (eik@iki.fi)
Date: Sun Dec 30 2007 - 01:06:02 CST

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    Asmus,

    What Jukka is referring to as a way to enter Latin letters with diacritics and strokes in a consistent manner is actually implemented both by Microsoft as an evaluation version for Finland and also in the Linux environment. The keyboard layout is based on the traditional Finnish/Swedish keyboard.

    I'll send a separate note to invite all interested experts to participate in a CEN Workshop on Multilingual Extensions to European (read: Latin) Keyboard Layouts. Our experience is one of the inputs to this Workshop. Also Mr Pentzlin was one of the participants in the meeting that recommended the setting up of this workshop.

    Regards, Erkki

    Erkki I. Kolehmainen
    Tilkankatu 12 A 3, FI-00300 Helsinki, Finland
    Puh. (09) 4368 2643, 0400 825 943; Tel. +358 9 4368 2643, +358 400 825 943

    -----Alkuperäinen viesti-----
    Lähettäjä: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] Puolesta Asmus Freytag
    Lähetetty: 29. joulukuuta 2007 22:10
    Vastaanottaja: Jukka K. Korpela
    Kopio: Unicode List
    Aihe: Re: List of Latin characters which look the same but are encoded differently

    My view is that there's nothing wrong with using a distinctive label on
    a keyboard, even to the point of choosing the lowercase letter for some
    keycaps. I suspect that most users would try that key with a shift to
    get the uppercase and not think twice about the inconsistency.

    When consistency gets in the way of getting the job done, it's no longer
    a help, but a hindrance.

    Using dead-key hacks seems a terrible idea - unless it allows you to
    achieve a consistency of approach. In other words, a keyboard layout
    where all diacritics can be typed as deadkeys has a certain consistency
    of its own, and might be easier to use for those typists that need to
    copy a wide variety of letter forms (e.g. from a list of names).
    Learning a dozen deadkeys would seem way easier than to learn three or
    four times that many key-combinations (not key-strokes) for precomposed
    forms.

    The worst design would be one, where you could never predict which
    combination might be available via dead-keys and which might not be, for
    example if the barred D required a deadkey but the Polish barred L might
    not.

    On the other hand, if I had to guess which design a standards body might
    come up with...

    A./

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