> I think many programming language implementations allow Unicode (or, at
> least, UTF-8!) in names.
That's a first step. A second step is to extend the syntax such that
these languages will not require the use of deprecated and/or ambiguous
ASCII characters such as
`'"- and probabaly also ~^
any more, such that we can ban these onto less prominent positions on a
next-generation English keyboard layout to make space for more
frequently used characters, which would then also become available as
substitutes for programming language syntax desigers.
> I can probably agree with you as far as quotation marks and different
> kinds of '-' are concerned, but the list you mentioned earlier
> included things like "superscript 3", which might mean slithering over
> the edge of a slippery slope.
The superscripts are widely required for writing SI units such as m�
correctly and their easy availability would hopefully end the use of
"sq. mtrs." by English keyboard users, but I agree that I am myself
slightly sceptical whether a revised English Unicode keyboard should
encourage users to enter compatibility forms. (In the end, I don't think
it is an issue, as for instance the � can easily be replaced by an
application with <sup>3</sup> or whatever is appropriate here).
> What about all the world's currency
> symbols, musical symbols, astrological symbols, logical operators and
> quantifiers, QED sign, Greek letters used in mathematics and physics,
> etc? Every good typesetter needs them, but perhaps we don't need them
> on the keyboard.
There are two classes of characters that a keyboard can support: labeled
ones and unlabeled ones. At present, keyboard standards define only
characters that are actually labeled on the keys. Present keyboard
standards are also still restricted to the historic mechanical limits of
typewriters (namely, a single shift level and non-spacing keys for
overstriking accents).
I agree that the set of labeled characters on a keyboard should remain
small, probabaly not much above 100. But digital keyboards (as opposed
to mechanical typewriters) allow the addition of convenient new entry
methods such as
- additional shift levels (ctrl, alt, altgr, meta, super, hyper, etc.
have been used in the past by some vendors on proprietary extensions
of national keyboard standards)
- prefix keys (e.g., the compose key on Sun keyboards that is pressed
before a sequence of other keys, e.g. compose c o -> �)
These mechanisms can be used to put a few hundred additional symbols
onto keyboards in ways that will not confuse the beginner, but that
nevertheless allow the subset required by a more specialised user to be
easily remembered (especially if they becomes a vendor-independent
international standard). I can think of a repertoire of ~300 common
decomposed characters for which I would love to have more convenient
entry methods on a future English keyboard than the fallback options
listed in http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/ISO-14755.pdf
> But here's one that should go in rather near the top of the list:
> decimal point. Definitely not the same as full stop. Despite the evil
> influence of computers, I think most people still distinguish them in
> handwriting.
>
> And I'm not so sure about non-breaking space. It's a typesetting hint
> rather than a character. You could also have different space
> characters for inter-word and inter-sentence space ...
You are now talking about design issues surrounding the base character
set (here: Unicode/UCS) itself. That's a very different thread of
discussion. I'd like to take Unicode and the encoding traditions on
which it is based for granted and just update the keyboard standards to
become adequate for the entry of Unicode plaintext.
Markus
--
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org, WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
--
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
