Wogb3 j3k3: Pre-Unicode substitutions for extended characters live on

Of possible interest - I noted recently the continued use of "3" for "ɛ" in tweets & some web content about a pair of Ghanaian plays whose titles include the Ga language term "Wogbɛ Jɛkɛ."

See http:/niamey.blogspot.com/2016/10/wogb-jk-ghanaian-language-input-support.html

The problem is input systems, not availability of fonts as it once was. Keyboard layouts exist for Ga and other Ghanaian languages, and these enable typing needed extended Latin characters. But a number of them, including possibly all for mobile devices, work by substituting selected key assignments, which in the case of multilingual text would apparently mean switching keyboards to accommodate characters not present in both/all languages used. Not ideal.

What are the possibilities of extended keyboard options on mobile devices for extended Latin characters to facilitate multilingual text composition? What is current thinking / practice wrt expanding virtual keyboards?

This gets beyond Unicode proper to ISO/IEC 9995 and perhaps ISO/IEC 14755, so may be beyond the scope of the list. Any responses off-list I can summarize if of wider interest.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Don Osborn

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Received on Tue Oct 11 2016 - 10:53:01 CDT