--- Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
> > 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.

I'm pretty sure I've played with at least one old
mechanical typewriter that had a dead key that stayed
clicked down when you punched it which in some way
caused a different character to be typed when you
punched the next key. I've always thought that was a
dead key and that overstriking characters were some-
thing different.

However I can no longer remember where I saw this
machine so I could be wrong.

> I think Suzanne would welcome that sort of dead key
> on a computer.
> The dead keys I am familiar with - e.g. the dead
> keys in the United States Internation 'keyboard' in
> Windows - do nothing until the second character is
> typed. Can such 'keyboards' be modified to display
> something while waiting for the second key press?

It may be possible to make a Tamil keyboard with dead
keys but I think it'd be counterintuitive to people
used to Tamil typewriters. To make input they would
be comfortable with would require an IME with a pre-
edit window - much like using CJK input methods on
applications which are not IME aware. The Tamil pre-
edit window would probably not use a real font but a
custom internal one set of visual glyphs. It would
probably work a word at a time but possible a line at
a time is also possible.

> We have another case of conflicting terminology
> here. On a Thai (also Tamil?) keyboard, the keys
> for the superscript and subscript vowels are what
> Peter Daniels would call 'dead keys', but they are
> not 'dead keys' in the sense of computer keyboard
> technology!

Yes I'm not sure if there was a distinction as I've
described in the mechanical days but there is now.

Andrew Dunbar.

> Richard
>
>

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