Keysym additions.

[Jim Gettys]

On Sun, 2006-09-24 at 11:50 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:

> 
> Either way a child studying foreign languages won't need a key inscribed
> with a specific locale but at most a specific langage. 

We'd not inscribe a single locale; multiple languages are taught in the
same school. Some kids learn multiple languages.

> (I say at most
> because one layout can be used for several european langages for example
> and I don't see a child needing separate layouts or keys if he studies
> italian and spanish)

Some parts of the world are harder, with more scripts in use.  And some
kids will need to learn languages from other parts of the world (think
of a Jewish or Arab child in many countries who is both using local
languages and also needs to learn his/her cultural language.

> 
> Also if you paint a key with a specific language that'll mean the child
> can not change language class without changing hardware, which is very
> restricting for poor countries.

The question is, what language should you switch to if you switch
languages?  A single switch isn't useful.

> 
> Besides, we do not have english caps symbol greek caps symbol but a caps
> symbol everyone uses regardless of the rest of the layout.
> 
> So I'd much rather you followed the steps of ISO/IEC 9995-7:1994 and
> defined a single switch layout symbol rather than multiplying it just
> because you can in your particular OLPC context.
> 
> http://www.services.gouv.qc.ca/fr/publications/enligne/standard/ISO_9995-7.pdf
> 
Thanks for this pointer, in any case.

There are actually two separate issues here: the glyph engraved/painted
on the key, and the semantic operation you want to have happen.  Having
one glyph for language change is the only sane thing to do (though I
don't find any symbol in the 9995-7 list you pointed to); but that
doesn't mean that having keysyms defined for what language you'd like to
switch to isn't useful; you'd rebind it whenever you want to switch
languages.

There the ISO 639-3 list may be useful.  I think we can map the 3 letter
codes to some sensible numerical mapping; they seem to be using 3 letter
lower case for the language code, so it is actually a 15 bit address
space they are using for language codes.  This is a tiny fraction of the
keysym address space. They plan to add further codes, so some direct
mapping will keep us from having to continually update a list ourselves.
Scattering 600 some odd language codes among 2^24 keysyms seems
completely insane.
                                  - Jim


-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child