I'd like to bring up two possible elements of a strategy for
multilingual keyboard layout standards. These have been brought up previously
but not together in this form as a suggsted "foundation" for devising
optimal layouts for multiple languages whose orthographies use extended Latin
characters.
Keeping in mind that …
* most users will have more than one language (hence
possibly need to use more than one language layout)
* most users will use multiple software applications on
multiple computers over the course of their life
* most computers will have multiple users, perhaps using
different languages
... it seems important to provide as consistent a keyboard
arrangement as possible across languages. We know that is not easy. Efforts to
meet this challenge tend to go on the one hand to one extreme of packing all
possible characters into the several planes you get with the AltGr key or some
sort of deadkey, and on the other to the extreme of language/orthography-specific
layouts.
Personally I tend to think in terms of moving from the
latter (language-specific layouts) towards as reasonable a combination dictated
mainly by geography (languages in a particular country or region). What makes
that practical is that for the most part, orthographies are set on the country
levels, and in some cases are done so with similar concerns (i.e.,
orthographies for several languages are set at the country level, with some
harmonization). Nevertheless, there are still too many combinations.
However, in the mass of possible combinations a few patterns
emerge, namely some characters are much more common across a number of language
orthograpies and countries, and some different characters stand for the same
sound in different orthographies (sometimes different orthographies for the
same language, but more often in orthographies for different languages.
Therefore the two elements I'd like to suggest are:
1) Fixed stars & moving stars: The most common of the
extended Latin characters will be assigned without variation to certain keys:
for instance, the eng to the n ; the open-o to the o ; the open-e to the e.
Other characters might be moved as need be with a specific order of preference.
I mentioned this a few years ago on this list in
http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-collaboration/msg00509.html
. (The name alludes to the distinction in ancient astronomy between stars that
do not move relative to one another, and the planets which appear to be stars
that wander in a particular way. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_stars
.)
2) Keeping characters with the same sound value on the same
keys. This was Paa Kwesi's suggestion more recently. It seems to make more
sense than to, say, have to find different places for the open-o and the
dot-under o, both of which logically relate to the plain o. On the other hand,
there is a problem is of course if the keyboard layout has to cover
orthographies with both characters. However, if the it is possible to provide
alternate layouts that users could toggle between, then this seems like a good
solution.
By beginning with these principles for keyboard layouts - a
few of the most-used extended characters always in the same place (key) and extended
characters with the same sound on the same place (key) , perhaps workable and
reasonably harmonized keyboard arrangements can be set for groups of languages in
the countries where orthographies include extended characters. This is not to
exclude other principles or approaches that complement the above, but to suggest
starting with these.
I'm not addressing the issue of how input happens (substitution,
deadkey, or key combo), just where the characters would be assigned on a
keyboard layout, whether virtual or physical.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org
