From: Michael \(michka\) Kaplan (michka@trigeminal.com)
Date: Mon Dec 29 2003 - 20:51:09 EST
From: "Philippe Verdy" <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr>
> If the intent is to display in a user interface which keystroke the user
> must press to create a character sequence it can be useful to know the
> character generated in the default state without modifiers (or the
character
> generated in CAPSLOCK mode).
Since the majority of keystrokes in ALL keyboards are created in different
shift states, I am not sure why this relates to the question that Adam was
asking at all (he clearly referenced AltGr out of the starting gate).
> This is an issue for example when creating "accelerators" or keyboard
> shortcuts in an application and one wants to display this shortcut in menu
> items or in button tooltips. (For example, how do you display the
"mnemonic"
> in Java menu items, or the "&"-selected character in Windows resources, fo
> menu items that display non Latin strings such as Chinese or Arabic? You
> need to display it at end of the menu item, and the underlined convention
> for mnemonics is not usable. But which string will you display? You need
> this information support from the keyboard driver itself or an OS API).
This is an interesting but mostly unrelated topic to either Unicode in
general or Adam's question in particular, but if you understand IMEs and all
of the existing CJK input methos then you know that it is impossible to have
CJK accelerators or keyboard shortcuts.
> Designing keyboard shortcuts that will work in internationalized
> applications is a difficult problem for the localization of applications,
> and there's no way to do it without knowing the exact keyboard layout
> actually used, but that may not be knowed precisely at run-time, or may be
> customized by the user. Not supporting shortcuts is also a problem for
> accessibility.
Very true -- but also off of the topic -- its not polite to take over a
thread and push it off in unrelated directions -- lets stick to Adam's
query, here. K?
> Unfortunately, Windows does not help the application to select appropriate
> shortcuts to use to match some prefered "accessible characters present in
> menu items. There's no automatic generation of these shortcuts from menu
> item strings, and no automatic display.
Um, I guess you mean application tools, right? Again offtopic, but this is a
problem that is not very easy to solve and which will often fail even when
it is solved since it assumes that the language to which an application is
localized is also the input language (which is often false).
Lets drop this one, since it is REALLY not what was being asked. Hijacking
of threads is poor netiquette.
> > 2) The fact that many keystrokes produced more than one keystrokes
(called
> > ligatures there athough the technology can apply to code point
> combinations
> > that do not, in fact make up ligatures)
>
> I suppose you speak about complex keyboards that generate variable-size
> sequences of characters from multiple keystrokes, using complex input
> methods, such as Pinyin input method editors for Chinese.
No, I do not. I am speaking of the fact that any keystroke can be mapped to
between one and four UTF-16 code points. No CJK implied or expressed, as
IMEs have their own unrelated rules.
> > 7) No way to explain SGCAPS use of the CAPS lock, used by Hebrew, Czech
> and
> > others.
>
> Also the Swiss German keyboard...
Actually, ironically, no. The "feature" was added for the sake of that
keyboard (thus the "SG" in the name) but it was not, eventually, used there.
The name simply stuck.
> > 8) No way to describe "custom" shift keys like seen in the [unfortunate]
> > Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard
>
> Do you mean here a sort of a second AltGr modifier mapped onto an OEM key?
Yes
> Or about the many dead keys it supports to enter accents used in various
> languages?
No
> > I could go on. but you get the idea. There is no simple list because
there
> > is no simple format that can describe them.
>
> Notably the complex keyboards that support multiple scripts or large
> scripts: would you show Kangxi radicals on a Chinese keyboard used with a
> ideographic radical composition mode, or the ASCII keycap in the Romaji
mode
> of a Japanese keyboard?
Again unrelated to keyboards -- this is an IME issue, not a keyboard issue.
It is also nothing to do with Adam's question.
Lets get back on topic, please....
MichKa [MS]
NLS Collation/Locale/Keyboard Development
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
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