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

[Marcel Schneider]

On Thu, 03 Nov 2016 13:44:12 -0700, Doug Ewell wrote:

> I think we are talking about two different issues here. It's important 
> to keep these separate, to avoid talking past each other. 

Thank you for the clarification.

> A more realistic course of action might be for someone outside of 
> Microsoft, maybe someone on this list, to create their own GUI wrapper 
> around the Microsoft engine, a "new MSKLC" so to speak. That new project 
> could remove the MSKLC limitation, but not the Windows one. 

>From my own point of view, I can tell that creating big keyboard layouts 
(above 500 characters) in a GUI is really inefficient, hence the demand 
for an ‘import table’ feature as expressed in the cited 2010 thread:
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2010-m01/0020.html
# 6.

The MSKLC is OK, it provides all that is needed, gives a detailed insight 
into the first few shift states, and is well documented. What we can do:
1) Follow Michaelʼs invitation to automate with a batch script, as seems 
to intend his cited blog post, see link on bottom of:
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2016-m10/0213.html
2) Share source templates (as Iʼm doing on http://dispoclavier.com
already commented in English, but still under development);
3) Share spreadsheet folders that are automated for efficient layout table 
editing (allocation table, deadtrans list, ligatures table, NamesList.txt 
or UnicodeData.txt in a spreadsheet, for multiple purpose).

> Denis Jacquerye suggested using the letter as the dead key instead of 
> the diacritic. Perhaps a more straightforward approach would be to give 
> the diacritical marks their own normal keys, so the user could type 
> EPSILON, (combining) TILDE, (combining) ACUTE. 

This is found also for Bambara on a French-layout-based Malian layout:
http://www.mali-pense.net/IMG/pdf/le-clavier_francais-bambara.pdf
Linked on:
http://www.mali-pense.net/Ressources-pour-la-pratique-du.html
On this layout, the grave and circumflex accents are duplicated as combining 
diacritics to be used throughout as tone marks for consistency, because 
rendering differences were experienced between composed and precomposed.

> Marcel Schneider's suggestion of using Keyman instead might be the best, 
> if it is mandatory for the Windows version of this layout to be 
> identical to the Ubuntu version, for reasons I don't understand (many 
> keyboard layouts are already not constant across platforms). 

Yes, e.g. Apple does provide a French (France) layout that allows to write 
French, while Microsoft does not, although the charsets had been completed.
As soon as a standard layout does exist, it should be cross-platform.
So Mats Blakstad scarcely would be willing to maintain the two diverging 
implementations when standardization is on.

Marcel