Polyglot keyboards (was: Non-standard 8-bit fonts still in use)

[Otto Stolz]

Hello,

am 2016-05-08 um 20:11 Uhr schrieb Don Osborn:
> Another thing about user needs is that the polyglot/pluriliterate user
> may prefer something that reflects that, as opposed to having multiple
> keyboards for languages whose character repertoires are much the same.
>  From a national or regional (sub-continental) point of view I would
> think a one-size fits all/many standard or set of keyboard standards
> would be ideal. But no one seems to be going there yet, after all these
> years.

Yes, there is somebody going there. E. g., the German standard
DIN 2137:2012-06 defines a “T2” layout which is meant
for all official, Latin-based orthographies worldwide, and
additionally for the Latin-based minority languages of Germany
and Austria. The layout is based on the traditional QWERTZU layout
for German and Austrian keyboards (which is now dubbed “T1”).
Cf. <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_(Tastaturbelegung)>.

There is also a “T3” layout defined which comprises all characters
mentioned in ISO/IEC 9995-3:2010.

You can even buy a hardware T2 keyboard; however I have not tried it,
because I have defined my own keyboard layout suite (pan-European Latin,
pan-European Cyrillic, monotonic Greek, and Yiddish) for personal use,
long ago.

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz