0027, 02BC, 2019, or a new character?

[Richard Wordingham via Unicode]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 03:22:37 +0800
Phake Nick via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

> >I found the Windows 'US International' keyboard layout highly
> >intuitive for accented Latin-1 characters.  
> How common is the US International keyboard in real life..?

I thought it was two copies per new Windows PC - one for 32- and the
other for 64-bit code.  I was talking about the *layout*.  The
apostrophe, quote, grave and circumflex on the usual US keyboard are
good enough labels for the acute, unlaut, grave and circumflex dead
keys. (Now, 'æ' is a problem.)

> Users would still need to manually add them in Windows, or in other
> computing tools vendors would need to add support for "US
> International" before they can be used

Select them, you mean.  It's only a problem if the computer's owner has
stopped users from selecting keyboards.  I thought Windows penetration
was better than 50%.

> How about, for example, a random tourist looking for info of random
> Kazakhstan city? Will they know how to type umlaut in a city's name?
> Most likely they'll simply type it without any umlaut and lost the
> distinction

Possibly.  From a US* keyboard on a PC in England, I enter "Munchen" in
a Google search and get entries for München.  I even get a reply
panel headed "Things to do in Munich".  The English Wikipedia redirects
me from Munchen to Munich.  Umlaut is simply not a problem.

Richard.

*Technically, it's a Thai keyboard, for when I type Tai Tham.  I have
trouble remembering where each digit key is.