From: Don Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Thu May 03 2007 - 07:17:09 CST
Thanks Debbie, I hear you and think I understand where you and others are
coming from. To respond to your phrasing, I'd separate out "better" and
"cheaper." I agree completely that there are cheaper ways of doing this
(that is, meeting input requirements of minority languages with
extended-Latin or non-Latin scripts in multilingual societies), but would
not agree that there is a "better" way (that is, if price were not a
concern, and speaking of the concept [one hopes the Optimus in practice will
live up to the hype]). So I'll keep hoping there'll be some breakthough in
costs, but in the meantime won't put off working for more immediately
realistic solutions.
Before leaving this topic let me offer three more quick thoughts:
* Unicode solved the issue of how to deal with multiple scripts by in effect
expanding the code space to cover everything in a single system, but we
still are dealing with input systems that are the direct descendants of
typewriter keyboards. I'm seeing the input situation today as analogous to
the character encoding situation when 8-bit was the norm: there's a "fixed"
layer (visible on the keyboard) that is the base and is changed only at some
cost, and a "variable" layer that can be different for different needs but
is not as visible and sometimes is a problem for users to deal with.
* What about the possibility of a "hybrid" keyboard in which only some keys
are dynamic OLEDs or LCDs? For instance the numeric keypad on the right
could be used this way. As costs decline, this might be an alternative
(though it would require keyboard layout creators that take this into
account).
* If we do get to see these keyboards at a lower price, it would be
interesting to see what kind of new input methods might emerge for non-Latin
scripts with large numbers of characters (CJK of course, but also others
such as languages written in Ethiopic/Ge'ez) and indeed for languages like
Vietnamese and Yoruba that have multiple diacritics in Latin-based
orthographies.
Don
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On
> Behalf Of Debbie Garside
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 6:51 AM
> To: dzo@bisharat.net; a12n-collaboration@bisharat.net;
> unicode@unicode.org
> Subject: RE: Optimus keyboard in the news
>
> Hi Don
>
> IMHO the Optimus keyboard is way too over priced and because it uses
> individual LCDs for each key it will remain over priced.
>
> I agree with you that the potential for this is enormous. The need is
> there
> but there are better/cheaper ways of doing this.
>
> Best regards
>
> Debbie Garside
> www.geolang.com
>
...
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