I claimed: > > «x + 1» : Left/right-pointing double-angle quotation mark, > > U+AB/U+BB. These are very well-supported (e.g., they are used for > > French quotations and are in Latin-1), and in many cases are the easiest > > to enter. However, do they too similar to the comparison operators < > > and >?
On Wed, 29 Oct 2014 20:10:36 -0400, John Cowan <co...@mercury.ccil.org> wrote: > The barrier is input, not display. I have a keyboard driver for Windows > that allows you to type about 1000 characters[1], but most people don't. > I would say these are the only brackets that are easy for anyone to type, > and even then they don't work for people using the U.S. keyboard and > standard drivers. (On X, there is a compose key, but only a few people > are using Linux on their desktops.) Input is obviously critical. I think the options are in place, though. There's a lot of info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input So - regarding Windows. Many applications have application-specific mechanisms. Windows programs that use the RichEdit control (like WordPad) let you enter the hex digits followed by alt-x. So "a" "b" "alt-x" will create U+AB. Emacs and vim have other mechanisms. You can also hold down ALT, and while holding it down, type 0 followed by the DECIMAL value and release on the numeric keypad. This depends on the input language. So "Hold-ALT 0 1 7 1 Release-ALT" inserts the left, and "Hold-ALT 0 1 8 7 Release-ALT" inserts the right. I just tried it out on a laptop without a separate keypad, and it still worked (I had to use Fn with the key it represented, but it did work). The most general solution in Windows is to first set the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Input Method EnableHexNumpad string type (REG_SZ) to 1. Then reboot. Then you can type "ALT + hex-of-Unicode release-ALT" (only the + on the numeric keypad works). This works on laptops without a numeric keypad too, just use the Fn key. That really should be the default; it's much faster and simpler. An annoying problem is that you have to set your editors to actually save as UTF-8 on Windows. Thankfully, that's a one-time step. If you want other applications to know it's UTF-8, you may need to insert the UTF-8 BOM, an abomination that's only useful on Windows but seems to be gracefully handled in many cases. I found that vim quietly keeps the UTF-8 BOM if it's there, and I suspect other applications do the same. There's no doubt that it is easier to use ASCII than anything else. On the other hand, we've been working to move to a Unicode world for years. Perhaps the world is finally ready :-). --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
