[Lexicog] RE: Query re keyboard re-mapping

[Benjamin J Barrett]

Thanks to both Patrick Chew and Peter Kirk! I guess I was asking the
wrong people.

I'm waiting for a new computer, that's why I had stopped working on this
issue. I was hoping to create a pan-Wakashan keyboard, and that
superscripted "w" was the most difficult character to deal with. I'll
try again when my computer comes in.

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peterkirk at qaya.org]
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:40 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] RE: Query re keyboard re-mapping

On 17/09/2004 20:27, Benjamin J Barrett wrote:

> I suppose that's only natural, though, since superscripting is a
> formatting issue. I went to the Unicode page and they have a FAQ
> telling people not to request modified letters. They have a variety of

> diacritics that have a built-in backspace so they appear above the
> letter typed after them.

The problem with what you write here is that Unicode *does* have a
superscripted w character, U+02B7, and indeed most other superscripted
letters. These characters are scattered around rather. Some of them are
in the Spacing Modifier Letters block,
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf. More are in the Phonetic
Extensions block, http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D00.pdf. A few,
mostly numerals, are in the Superscripts and Subscripts block,
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2070.pdf. And some are in the Latin-1

Supplement, http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf. I think between

these different places there is a full superscript basic Latin alphabet
plus several special forms and some Greek letters. See also
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch14.pdf, p.12 of this file

which is numbered p.359.

If there are any other superscripts which are needed to make a semantic
distinction (rather than just formatting) in any language and script,
and you can prove this, Unicode will add them.

Of course this doesn't solve the keyboarding issue. But Tavultesoft
Keyman and MS Keyboard Layout Creator will both allow you to assign keys

to any of these characters. And you need a font, of course, but there
are a number available which support these superscripts. For example,
Gentium (a free download from SIL) supports superscript w, but not all
of the superscripts. Code2000 should support all of them.

>
> With Longhorns (Windows 2006) well in the works, it might be too late,

> but it seems this is a critical issue for continuing the widening
> compatability of Microsoft's software with various languages. Again, I

> would like to make a strong case to Microsoft. Along with this is the
> need to change the two-letter language abbreviations used in HTML and
> Microsoft's language bars to a three-letter abbreviation such as the
> Ethnologue uses. With only two letters, we'll run out of possible
> languages after 625 languages.


I know there is work in progress on this. In fact I think there is
already an international standard in progress for three letter language
identifiers or similar. But I don't know what will be in Longhorn.
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