John Macdonald john-at-perlwolf.com |Perl 6| wrote:
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 08:10:41PM -0500, John M. Dlugosz wrote:
John Macdonald john-at-perlwolf.com |Perl 6| wrote:
However, the assumption fails if "process" is supposed to mean that
everyone is capable of generating Unicode in the messages that they
are writing. I don't create non-English text often enough to have
it yet be useful to learn how. (I'd just forget faster than I'd use
it and have to learn it again each time - but Perl 6 might just be
the tipping point to make learning Unicode composition worthwhile.)
Just copy/paste from another message or a web page. Perhaps a web page
designed for that purpose...
Yep, I've done that.
But comparing the difference in effort between:
- press a key
- Google for a web page that has the right character set, cut, refocus, paste
means that I don't bother for the one or two "weird" characters
every few months that is my current Unicode usage. If I were
working with Unicode frequently, it would be worth setting up
links and mechanisms, or learning the keyboard compose sequences
for frequently used characters. I'm sure that there are many
people in a similar situation.
I noticed I Wikipedia that the edit page now has a selection at the
bottom. Very handy. I usually use BabelMap to explore characters and
also copy them to the clipboard.
But a while back I started writing a book on basic science for kids and
curious adults, and started off with scientific notation. The crosses,
dots, and math-minus was driving my nuts, in such quantity as to prevent
the flow of thought. So I bought a 16-button "X-keys" strip. Turns out
the software stinks to high heaven and was essentially useless (hmm,
what's the point, then?) so I had to write my own driver for it.
Minimal, but gets the job done.
--John
