> In less pedantic terms:
<SNIP/>
Oddly, that was the pedantic explanation I sought.
[Alain] Am I supposed to find this nice?
> Any national group is group 1 by definition according to ISO/IEC 9995.
> Group 2 is a Latin supplementary group to access those
> Latin-script-written languages not accessible with a national group 1
> also using Latin script. Other groups are still not numbered and their
> actual access not standardarized.
I am again baffled here. If "any national group" is group 1, then my U.S. keyboard layout, a German keyboard layout on a U.S. keyboard, a German layout on a German keyboard , and Michael's Irish Unicode setup, are all group 1? Certainly I misunderstand this. More pedantry, /si vous plais/.
[Grammar teacher] "si vous plais" should be "s'il vous pla�t": literally in English "if it you pleases", i.e. "if it pleases you" (^8= ), so it should please me?
[Alain] Group 2 is fixed, but incomplete per se, and it needs a group 1, for one reason: it contains all accents used in ISO/IEC 6937, for example, but none of the basic 26 Latin letters to which these accents are supposed to apply. Now since we were never able to standardize the group numbering system (beyond 2 groups), and go beyond the Latin script (because of one American company opposing to this, or perhaps one individual working for an American company, in 1991), then group 1 is supposed to be *the* group which contains *the* 26 basic Latin letters and anything else that "nationals" judged necessary for their needs. This group cantaining the 26 Latin letters is *the* primary group as far as ISO/IEC 9995-3 (which defines group 2) is concerned.
Now, as we know, even if the Latin script is perhaps used on all keyboards sold in the world (there might be exceptions, I don't know one), it is not the end of the world either (we knew it ot once -- I, for one, would have liked to at least standardize entry of Vietnamese letters since we were bound to the Latin script, but I was prevented to go beyond the ISO/IEC 6937 repertoire at the time). National keyboards *typically* need to support other scripts (at least 85% of this planet's inhabitants use a script other than the Latin, even if the Latin script is perhaps the script in which is written the biggest number of unrelated languages -- that creates other problems - like the problem of multiple groups for only one alphabet, the least of those problems).
So there is a need to enhance the group selection model (the "layout switching" mechanism invented by an IBM team, in which was my respected friend and colleague Dr Umamaheswaran). I invite all those interested to join ISO/IEC JTC1/SC35/WG1, which will again try to do this (13 years after the first try).
> [ISO/IEC 9995-1]
> 4.13 level select: A function that, if activated, will change the keyboard
> state to produce characters from a different level.
>
> 4.10 group select: A function that, if activated, will change the keyboard
> state to produce characters from a different group.
[/|/|ike] These definitions, as well as the definitions of "level" and "group", don't seem to make particular distinction between the two. Does any hard distinction exist?
[Alain] As I said in my previous mail, these definitions are not the best of definitions. The distinction is but intuitive, you have to see the diagrams where labeling makes the difference: on a key label, the levels [in one group] are in the same column [like on an American keyboard], and each group occupies it own colums (given the small room on one key, one could but imagine 3 groups labeled: group 1 to the left (like on an American keyboard [you will see that letters are typicaly not centered]), group 2 to the right, and group n in the center (like a group for Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese kanas, and so on).
Alain LaBont�
Qu�bec
