Google street view provides some amazing facilities. I am wondering if Google street view technology, with a few additions, could be applied so as to produce a new end-user-friendly interface for keying Unicode characters.
Google street view includes simulations of some art galleries. I am thinking of the possibility of a web-based facility, accessible, as desired, either directly from a link in a web browser, or from a link from within a desktop publishing program, to an art gallery simulation. The art gallery simulation could either be based on images gathered from a real world art gallery or on images gathered from a virtual world model of an art gallery. An end user could then move around in the simulation and move from room to room, with guidance from signs, as in a real art gallery. Google street view includes superimposed logos upon which an end user can click. For example, the following, where clicking causes a photograph to be displayed. The superimposed logos disappear if the mouse unit is left untouched for a short time. http://maps.google.com/?ll=43.467937,11.043947&spn=0.001413,0.002248&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=43.467984,11.042802&panoid=uEZ7GlCYA2tV1i8u1i_A8Q&cbp=12,83.14,,0,-12.04 Would it be possible to have many superimposed logos in the simulated art gallery and for those superimposed logos each to be such that clicking upon it would add a Unicode character, or a sequence of Unicode characters, as appropriate, into a character buffer? This is just the start of an idea and I cannot implement it on my own. I am putting the idea forward in the hope that it might be regarded as a useful idea and that it could be developed into a widely available and useful free facility on the web. Readers are welcome to comment and hopefully extend and improve the idea please. William Overington 21 February 2013
