suzmccarth wrote:

>
> (Dead keys IMO
> are very non-intuitive and should only be used for a very limited
> number of features in any script, if at all.)

?

I've had the impression that you're old enough to remember typewriters.
Didn't you ever have to put accents on letters? Don't you remember the
annoyance of backspacing?

For those of you who are younger than typewriters, a "dead key" was one
that didn't move the carriage but printed an accent above/below where
you were about to type a letter. The contemporary equivalent is the
zero-width "floating" accent typed before its letter. (I've worked in
fonts that did it that way, and in ones where the accent is typed after
its letter; and the "accent-first" system, though perhaps
counterintuitive, is preferable for a number of reasons. This was a
finding of Lloyd Anderson, who some of you may know is seriously into
ergonomics. Even advocated dvorak keyboard for a while.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...