Last modified: 2010-07-20 18:30:10 UTC
In the "Special characters" menu of the Vector skin, there are only special characters for Latin, Latin-extended, IPA, Symbols, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Bangla, Telugu, Sinhala and Gujarati. Why these? I have written articles about things related to South-East Asia, so I would have liked to have seen also Thai, Lao, and Cambodian script be available in this menu. It also puzzles me that you have chosen to include four Indic scripts, but have not chosen Devanagari which is used to write Hindi, the official language of India. It also strikes me as a weakness to sort the Latin characters alphabetically and to divide them into the two arbitrarily defined Unicode categories: Latin and Latin-extended. It would probably be better for users if the characters were divided into language subsets, or something similar alike, so that, for instance, a person wanting to write Vietnamese could go to the Vietnamese subsection and find all the characters needed to write Vietnamese there, rather than having to switch back and forth between the two categories Latin and Latin-extended.
(In reply to comment #0) > In the "Special characters" menu of the Vector skin, there are only special > characters for Latin, Latin-extended, IPA, Symbols, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, > Bangla, Telugu, Sinhala and Gujarati. Why these? I have written articles about > things related to South-East Asia, so I would have liked to have seen also > Thai, Lao, and Cambodian script be available in this menu. It also puzzles me > that you have chosen to include four Indic scripts, but have not chosen > Devanagari which is used to write Hindi, the official language of India. > We included the alphabets we got from the community. If you can provide me with the Thai, Lao, Cambodian and Devanagari alphabets, please do, and I'll add them. > It also strikes me as a weakness to sort the Latin characters alphabetically How is alphabetic sorting bad? It helps people find characters, right? > and to divide them into the two arbitrarily defined Unicode categories: Latin > and Latin-extended. It would probably be better for users if the characters > were divided into language subsets, or something similar alike, so that, for > instance, a person wanting to write Vietnamese could go to the Vietnamese > subsection and find all the characters needed to write Vietnamese there, rather > than having to switch back and forth between the two categories Latin and > Latin-extended. It's true that there's languages that use a mix of both, which makes this distinction kind of annoying, so that's worth looking into. However, creating separate categories for each language would 1) clutter the left menu spectacularly and 2) duplicate characters in lots of places
(In reply to comment #1) > It's true that there's languages that use a mix of both, which makes this > distinction kind of annoying, so that's worth looking into. However, creating > separate categories for each language would 1) clutter the left menu > spectacularly and 2) duplicate characters in lots of places Why not allow projects to customize it, like old edittools?
(In reply to comment #2) > (In reply to comment #1) > > > It's true that there's languages that use a mix of both, which makes this > > distinction kind of annoying, so that's worth looking into. However, creating > > separate categories for each language would 1) clutter the left menu > > spectacularly and 2) duplicate characters in lots of places > > Why not allow projects to customize it, like old edittools? They can. The documentation on it it not very good just yet, though, and I haven't had any time to beef it up.
(In reply to comment #2) > (In reply to comment #1) > > > It's true that there's languages that use a mix of both, which makes this > > distinction kind of annoying, so that's worth looking into. However, creating > > separate categories for each language would 1) clutter the left menu > > spectacularly and 2) duplicate characters in lots of places > > Why not allow projects to customize it, like old edittools? However, we do try to create a special characters toolbar that's as generic as possible.
> If you can provide me with > the Thai, Lao, Cambodian and Devanagari alphabets, please do, and I'll add > them. I have now a page at [[:no:Bruker:V85/Alphabets]] giving the Thai, Lao and Khmer (Cambodian) alphabets, and how I propose that the characters be sorted.
(In reply to comment #5) > > If you can provide me with > > the Thai, Lao, Cambodian and Devanagari alphabets, please do, and I'll add > > them. > I have now a page at [[:no:Bruker:V85/Alphabets]] giving the Thai, Lao and > Khmer (Cambodian) alphabets, and how I propose that the characters be sorted. Awesome, thanks. I will add these characters some time after the weekend.
Added in r69617, available for testing at http://prototype.wikimedia.org/en-wp/index.php?title=Manchester_Small-Scale_Experimental_Machine&action=edit . Please test and confirm I got it right.
(In reply to comment #7) > Added in r69617, available for testing at > http://prototype.wikimedia.org/en-wp/index.php?title=Manchester_Small-Scale_Experimental_Machine&action=edit > . Please test and confirm I got it right. It works very well. I did notice one glitch (and that is my own fault): The character 'ๅ' is not included in the Thai layout. I have added it to my Alphabets page, as the fourth vowel diacritic ([[:no:Bruker:V85/Alphabets]], view history for changes). Well done!
(In reply to comment #8) > (In reply to comment #7) > > Added in r69617, available for testing at > > http://prototype.wikimedia.org/en-wp/index.php?title=Manchester_Small-Scale_Experimental_Machine&action=edit > > . Please test and confirm I got it right. > > It works very well. I did notice one glitch (and that is my own fault): The > character 'ๅ' is not included in the Thai layout. I have added it to my > Alphabets page, as the fourth vowel diacritic ([[:no:Bruker:V85/Alphabets]], > view history for changes). Well done! Added in r69635, thanks.