MSKLC restrictions (was: Ways to show Unicode contents on Windows?)

Hello,

am 2013-07-30 um 02:11 Uhr hat Ilya Zakharevich geschrieben:
> [I’m switching to “pedantic” mode since there are so many posts on
> this list which FALSELY accuse Windows' keyboard system of
> shortcomings. There ARE many shortcomings, but they are usually
> buried under an avalanche of misinformation.]
…
> Windows itself supports 2¹⁶ - 1 dead keys. Due to bugs in MSKLC
> (in kbdutool), one is restricted to having 2¹² - 1 dead keys in a
> .klc.
…
> b) A significant limitation of Windows keyboard system is that one
> cannot enter an OUT-of-BMP character via a deadkey. (And this is
> probably what you meant above.)

Another limitation: Apparently you cannot define sequences
of dead keys. If I am mistaken, I’d appreciate any hint
on how to define dead key sequences, in the MSKLC framework.

E. g., for a Greek-polytonic keyboard the natural approach
would be to have just seven dead keys, three for the three
different accents, two for the two different spiritus, one
for the subscripted Iota, and one for the diaresis. Then,
a character with multiple diacritica, such as 1F96 “ᾖ”
(GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PSILI AND PERISPOMENI AND
YPOGEGRAMMENI) would be entered with the corresponding
multiple dead keys (three, in this example).

Compare this to the current Greek-Polytonic Windows keyboard
layout, which is virtually uncomprehensible, because you have
to memorize one particular dead key for every single combination
of diacritica (more than 30 different dead keys).

I guess, also for a Viatnamese keyboard layout, sequences
of dead keys would come handy.

Best wishes,
  Otto Stolz
Received on Wed Jul 31 2013 - 08:33:30 CDT