Polyglot keyboards

[Marcel Schneider]

On Tue, 10 May 2016 12:10:35 +0200, Otto Stolz  wrote:

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

Wasnʼt it the other way round? As far as I remember the sources, 
to stick with the tradition of referring to an ISO subset of Unicode 
(MES-1 for ISO/IEC 9995-3:2002), the German NB urged ISO to adopt 
a new subset tailored for the then on-coming ISO/IEC 9995-3:2010, 
that in turn was intended to hold the invoked DIN 2137:2012, which 
was overflowing the ISO keyboard framework on other sides too, 
leading to the addition of part 11 past year.

As of the new Unicode subsetʼs extent, there were other problems 
raised through its being tailored for a given keyboard layout 
that did not make full use of the existing keyboard resources 
of the mainstream operating system. As a result, several Latin letters 
are missing, ending up in a twilighty mix of support and unsupport 
across Latin script using continents. While claiming coverage of 
several African and American languages, again several African and 
American languages are unsupported, notably through the lack 
of Ɛ, Ɔ, Ʌ. Remember that Bamanankan is an official language of Mali.

Having promised not to stay discussing keyboard layouts on 
the Unicode List, I canʼt help recalling in this *new* thread 
the harm done to Latin script using communities by excluding 
their alphabets from an internationally designed keyboard standard 
in the era of globalisation.

Everybody on this List remembers the oddities that have followed 
the launch of the Multilingual Latin Subset, redubbed so on the spot 
from the originally proposed “Multilingual International Subset” for 
its not covering Greek nor Cyrillic, and subsequently annotated 
on demand of the ANSI, initiated by a paper from Denis Jacquerye, 
as not covering all Latin script using languages, in order to avoid 
misleading future font designers.

Marcel