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    Slash dots - typewriter pron ⋮

    • Started by pinkyache
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    Which keys are missing in X layout? (There's probably a Dreymar layer for that.)

    http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2016/03/ … werty.html

    Some nice linkage there.

    Last edited by pinkyache (05-Nov-2019 11:19:33)

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    Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

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    • From: Viken, Norway
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    Yeah, I have the … and ⋮ and ⋱ and ⋰ and ⋯ and ∵ and ∴ and ∷ now that you made me look. The trick is to know where! I had to consult my help images…! (ʘ_ʘ;)

    …⋰⋮⋱…

    (They were on the Science/Math and Dot-Above dead keys. E.g., {AltGr+. ;} produces ⋮ )

    It's not true that a character for paragraph is never used, as that page claims. We use the pilcrow sign ¶ for that.

    It was a really fun read, thanks!   ฅʕ •ᴥ•ʔฅ

    Last edited by DreymaR (05-Nov-2019 13:48:37)

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    Interesting that M was on the middle row there. I wonder why it got moved to the bottom row. If it stayed on the home row it would have been better.

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    As you may have read in the QWERTY prehistory article [Kasuoka 2011] mentioned from the one linked to above, the layout started out as fairly boustrophedonic  with respect to the consonants on the middle and lower rows. So the stretches JKLM is merely a remnant of the original middle-row consonant run BCDFGHJKLM that continued with a reverse NPQRSTVWXZ on the lower row of the presumable 1870 version of the layout. As more characters were moved around due to feedback from users including telegraph transcribers, the M stayed in place for the 1873 version (at which point QWRTP had moved up and C down to make space for punctuation on the lower row) which was actually produced.

    The final transition to a QWERTY quite like the one used today came with Remington's 1882 cooperation with Wyckoff, Seaman & Benedict it seems. Exactly why M, C and X were moved in that layout isn't known I think. The early Teletype terminal didn't have room for M on the home row though, so that may be a hint.

    Last edited by DreymaR (06-Nov-2019 14:32:30)

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    (Looks up 'boustrophedonic', wow that may have saved me reading the same line ad-infinitum.)

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    I think it would

    ot nuf doog eb

    bring back boustrophedonic text.

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    Apparently, Unicode has no support for boustrophedonic text. I tried the Right-left and Left-right marks but Windows doesn't support them directly in just any old text field it seems.

    http://unicode.org/faq/bidi.html

    Last edited by DreymaR (05-Apr-2020 23:29:56)

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    That's quite surprising, given that Unicode's goal is to support all human writing systems and characters.

    Then again, they do seem more preoccupied lately with adding ever more unnecessary emojis, so who knows.

    Using Colemak-DH with Seniply.

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    Boustrophedonic writing isn't in use anywhere anymore so that may be a point. But Unicode supports many dead scripts so I don't know. The whole right-left thing seems a bit messy if you ask me. I'd like a reality in which I can insert a Right-to-left marker and the text direction switches on the fly no matter where I am. But that's not happening even though Unicode seems to support it as such. If there were a switch-direction marker one could use it to produce boustrophedonic writing, but input systems would still have to support it.

    Last edited by DreymaR (07-Apr-2020 14:30:40)

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    • Shai
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    Oh, that's clever Shai! Using CSS to produce boustrophedonic text. With this method any web page can support it at least. But the dream of having it as an inherent possibility in any text field such as the one I'm writing in now will still have to wait I suppose. Not that I personally actually need it.  ¯\(º_o)/¯

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    That is fun the CSS/JS hack.  Annoying that you need the JS to break into lines to then span.

    Yesterday I was thinking about this, and whether you could use colour to help pair the end of one line with the beginning of another.  And soon realised it was hard to target a line.

    I think I could learn to read text in a boustrophedonic (sp?) manner.

    A switching point/direction character makes sense @dreymar.

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    Physicians deafen our ears with the Honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly Panacaea, their sovereign Guiacum.

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    pinkyache said:

    Which keys are missing in X layout? (There's probably a Dreymar layer for that.)

    http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2016/03/ … werty.html

    Some nice linkage there.

    U+205x in the unicode table!

    Alatrix

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    If you mean the dot spacers like ⋮ ⋯ ⋰ ⋱, they're on my DotAbove dead key, implemented in EPKL: Hit {AltGr+period, <one of ; : / \ >}. I didn't use the U+205D code point but the U+22EE etc (dec 8942–8925) versions.

    Last edited by DreymaR (03-May-2020 14:31:36)

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