Possible to add new precomposed characters for local language in Togo?

Doug Ewell doug at ewellic.org
Thu Nov 3 18:24:57 CDT 2016


Philippe Verdy wrote:

>> Mats is talking about the fact that a dead key combination (of any
>> length) under Windows can generate only a single UTF-16 code unit.
>
> That's wrong. Windows can perfectly generate multiple code units (in
> fact it does it for non BMP characters, including in MSKLC!) from its
> KLC tables using the default system driver.

>From a dead key combination? Can you provide an example?

> Only the GUI editor MSKLC cannot use this possibility and it does not
> understand chained tables (note: you can perfectly assign another
> table index instead of a character to the combination of a dead key
> state and another dead key, so that you can type another key which
> will be mapped in the combined state; the combined state can then
> accept the space bar to force the output of the NFC form for
> SPACE+diacritic1+diacritic2, which should be, if possible, a
> spacing-diacritic1 followed by a combining-diacritic2, or the reverse
> if both diacritics have a non-zero combining class but the second one
> has a lower combining clas than the second one).

Even if true -- and I doubt that the Windows keyboard engine knows
anything about Unicode combining classes -- it doesn't solve Mats's
problem. He doesn't want to generate the two diacritical marks in
isolation. He could do that without dead keys.

If a user types a dead key, followed by a character not listed in the
dead key table, Windows gives up and outputs the characters associated
with the two keys. That's not at all the same thing as what Mats wants.

What Mats wants is to enter <dead key>, <dead key>, <base letter> and
have the keyboard generate <letter with two diacritical marks>. That is
the sequence of 3 output code units that the Windows architecture -- not
just MSKLC -- does not support. If you disagree, please provide an
example.
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org




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