Another take on the English Apostrophe in Unicode

[Marcel Schneider]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015, Philippe Verdy  wrote:

> 2015-06-12 17:02 GMT+02:00 Marcel Schneider :

>>> Would it be possible to have wordprocessing software where one uses 
>>> CONTROL APOSTROPHE for U+2019 and CONTROL SHIFT APOSTROPHE for U+02BC 

>> CONTROL and CONTROL+SHIFT cannot work on French keyboards where 

>> the existing ASCII apostrophe is on the numeric row where there are 
>> also ascii controls mapped matching the ASCII open brace that is itself mapped 

>> on ALTGR (or CTRL+ALT) in order to generate instead the C0 control.

> In general it is a bad idea to map any printable character or combining character or dead key with 

> the CTRL or CTRL+SHIFT modifiers associated to any position in the alphanumerica part 

> of the keyboard: this should remain reserved to map function keys or C0/C1 controls only, 

> that local applications will use to assign them application-specific application functions.


Even the Language bar uses the upper row to define shortcuts with Control, Shift+Control, Shift+Alt to switch between keyboard layouts, which are prioritized. So to test the shortcuts with Clavier+, I must first remove shortcuts in the Language bar. Then the way was free to test Mr Overingtonʼs shortcuts for curly apostrophes (I will send the result just after). When I deleted the shortcuts in Clavier+ to test your advice, I found no application shortcuts for Ctrl+4 while the keys 1, 2, 5 and 0 are usually mapped as Word shortcut with CONTROL, while the heading formatting is with ALT. But indeed among ASCII controls I found eight on the French keyboard:

//VirtualKey |ScanCd |ISO_# |Ctrl
{VK_ESCAPE /*T01 */ ,0x001b
{VK_CANCEL /*X46 */ ,0x0003
{VK_BACK /*T0E E13*/ ,0x007f
{VK_OEM_6 /*T1A D11*/ ,0x001b
{VK_OEM_1 /*T1B D12*/ ,0x001d
{VK_OEM_5 /*T2B C12*/ ,0x001c
{VK_RETURN /*T1C C13*/ ,'\n'
{VK_OEM_102 /*T56 B00*/ ,0x001c

On the alphanumerical block, there are always the same five, three among them near the Enter key. The British-American Apostrophe key is exempt of Controls too. This is probably why Mr Overington wants to use CONTROL and SHIFT+CONTROL for U+2019 and U+02BC, as custom applications shortcuts. I had once defined a universal latin layout in the MSKLC, but as there is neither Kana nor chained dead keys, I allocated some dead keys (among a total of about 25) on CONTROL positions where I supposed there wouldnʼt be any shortcuts in any application, as on ù, ^, and even high digits on the upper row. It must be at http://dispoclavier.monsite-orange.fr, and somebody has been very astonished because precisely this may become buggy. Even more, this is disabled! Winwordc.exe did not process these dead keys. Other applications did, as I remember. But the layout was far too hard to remind, as I filled up double diacrited at the next free positions in the alphabet. This way I could allocate 1,921 Unicode characters (by editing the KLC source in spreadsheets), but since I know and use the WDK, I wonʼt make such a layout again. Now Iʼm trying to put even more characters but with chained dead keys, for double diacrited and for easy-to-remind compose sequences. For example, you will enter U+01BF LATIN LETTER WYNN by typing simply COMPOSE, w, y, n, n, or less if not needed to disambiguate. Same for digraphs and ligatures. The test version I use is now adapted to type the letter apostrophe U+02BC (Iʼll send after to the List some news about).





Best regards,
Marcel Schneider
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