[Lexicog] RE: Query re keyboard re-mapping

[John Roberts]

?????Forwarded by John Roberts
>From Bob Hallissy, NRSI

Some comments, if you feel it helpful: 

On Friday, September 17, 2004 8:27 PM "Benjamin J  Barrett " wrote:

>I went to the Unicode page and they have a FAQ telling people not to 
>request  modified letters. 

I'm not sure exactly which FAQ is being referred to here, but "modified letters" may be very reasonable additions to Unicode. SIL has, in fact, had quite a few such letters added to the standard. 

Now there are certain kinds of things that Unicode is not going to accept. For example, Unicode is not going to add any more precomposed letters that can already be represented by a base character plus one or more combining marks. And they are not going to add any more presentation formssuch as initial, medial, and final forms of Arabic characters. Unicode assumes that modern display engines can handle these kinds of things. 

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

"built-in backspace" is not an appropriate model for how combining marks work. But it is correct that Unicode has a quite a few characters, called combining marks, that are intended to be used in conjunction with base characters. Again, it is assumed that modern display engines can correctly position marks on the base character (above, below, to the side, wherever, as appropriate). 

>If Unicode does not have a superscripted  "w" as a character, ... 

It does: U+02B7 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL W.  This character is available in a number of fonts including Arial Unicode, Code 2000, and Doulos SIL. 

>Does anyone have experience in approaching these  bodies?

SIL has proposed a number of new characters to Unicode and had them accepted, so it is very possible. If a given language cannot be expressed in Unicode due to lack of a character, I'm sure Unicode would be open to proposals. 

Bob Hallissy 
Non-Roman Script Initiative 
SIL International

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