font-encoded hacks

[Neil Harris]

On 07/10/16 07:42, Denis Jacquerye wrote:
> In may case people resort to these hacks because it is an easier short term
> solution. All they have to do is use a specific font. They don't have to
> switch or find and install a keyboard layout and they don't have to upgrade
> to an OS that supports their script with Unicode properly. Because of these
> sort term solutions it's hard for a switch to Unicode to gain proper
> momentum. Unfortunately, not everybody sees the long term benefit, or often
> they see it but cannot do it practically.
>
> Too often Unicode compliant fonts or keyboard layouts have been lacking or
> at least have taken much longer to be implemented.
> One could wonder if a technical group for keyboards layouts would help this
> process.

What might also help is a reconceptualization of these hacks as being in 
effect non-standard character encodings: the existing software 
infrastructure for handling charsets could then be co-opted to convert 
them to (and possibly from) Unicode if desired.

Neil