Wogb3 j3k3: Pre-Unicode substitutions for extended characters live on

[Marcel Schneider]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2016 15:52:20 +0000, dzo_at_bisharat.net wrote:

> Of possible interest - I noted recently the continued use of "3" for "ɛ" in tweets 
> & some web content about a pair of Ghanaian plays whose titles include the Ga 
> language term "Wogbɛ Jɛkɛ."
> 
> See http:/niamey.blogspot.com/2016/10/wogb-jk-ghanaian-language-input-support.html
> 
> The problem is input systems, not availability of fonts as it once was. Keyboard 
> layouts exist for Ga and other Ghanaian languages, and these enable typing needed 
> extended Latin characters. But a number of them, including possibly all for mobile 
> devices, work by substituting selected key assignments, which in the case of 
> multilingual text would apparently mean switching keyboards to accommodate 
> characters not present in both/all languages used. Not ideal.
> 
> What are the possibilities of extended keyboard options on mobile devices for 
> extended Latin characters to facilitate multilingual text composition? What is 
> current thinking / practice wrt expanding virtual keyboards?
> 
> This gets beyond Unicode proper to ISO/IEC 9995 and perhaps ISO/IEC
> 14755, so may be beyond the scope of the list. Any responses off-list
> I can summarize if of wider interest.

One way to deal with increased sets of directly accessed letters is to map the 
extended letters on the digits row, and to toggle between a languages layout 
without directly accessed digits, and an ASCII layout, and to do this not via the 
system facility, but with a hard-coded toggle on key E00. This way Iʼm catering for 
French, [1] and I project to derive a Malian layout from it, but for Ga one has to 
start from the US-English layout, except where French has been adopted in Ghana.

I see no particular challenges in starting from whatever layout to implement this 
(including Vietnamese and Lithuanian, where digits are *already* on third level), 
when the users are interested in a change for enhancement; but in adding an extra 
row to a cellphone on-screen keyboard I do see several.

Kind regards,
Marcel

[1] http://dispoclavier.com/#i0