Extended Character Map
asked 2015-05-14 23:02:33 +0200
tldr; Please give vkb configurable access to all Unicode.
Sailfish/Jolla is testable via http://graphemica.com/characters and http://graphemica.com/unicode/ because available characters can hold-link, copy-paste via the clipboard. Unfortunately the default fonts fail to display adequately by page 2.
http://www.isthisthingon.org/unicode/allchars2.php
Please add extended character sets (for user input/GUI display) and fonts (for output/display) unrelated to human languages (for user input). The symbol sets seem limited to currencies, numbers and punctuation. While this is obviously functionally necessary, there may be many symbols unavailable as a result. If Unicode (UTF-8 or 16 but apparently not 32 because of its friction up against HTML 5) or a subset or symbol fonts are available then HTML character codes perhaps ought not to be needed in many situations.
Examples:
See http://www.fileformat.info/info/charset/UTF-16/list.htm for the present and absent display fonts on your system.
Phonetic alphabet (IPA), Smilies/emoticons, Chess figures, mathematical symbols, playing cards, weather symbols like Okta; trademark (TM), copyright, copyleft, Creative Commons;
"♞ I saw Jeff the horse's coat looked dusty when I last picked up manure with my trusty wheelbarrow." The knight symbol here is '♞'.
An implementation would not need much more than (famous last words) addition of character codes on virtual keyboards. The keyboards could be made as scrollable all-screen charts.
It would deliver a moderately usable but un-hack-ey fix to some issues of language coverage and begin to make Sailfish accessible to more nations and cultures.
The way I tested this was by adding every available vkb language. (The Eastern and Asian symbol writing seems good, though as a non-native non-user of those languages my opinion is only valid as an unsubstantiated comment.)