I think I have uncovered a cause for a bout of nostalgia I have been feeling for the Selectric typewriter.
In Windows 3.1, if I wished to include an APL program, or chess diagram characters, in a document, I would install a font with APL characters, or chess diagram characters, and then switch to that font. Normally, the special characters would just be assigned to the basic ASCII characters that I could type on my keyboard.
Now that we have Unicode support, I can't just switch to another font, I also need to select a special keyboard. And while Windows has keyboards for many different languages that you can install, it's not so simple with specialized keyboards. There's a special utility to install, which requires a particular version of the .NET framework.
With a Selectric typewriter, of course, switching to another set of characters also involved only one step, popping in a different element.
Going back to non-Unicode fonts in itself would be a step backwards. Having the text one types have... semantics... in addition to the correct appearance is a good thing, as it allows for later processing.
So my question is: could someone present examples of systems where fonts and keyboards are integrated in a constructive way, so that the advantage of having Unicode equivalents for almost every character is taken advantage of, and yet this does not burden the user with excessive complexity?
Comments
https://keyman.com/
Some years ago I used Ukelele to compile my own keyboard for German historic texts (needs long-s, rotunda and some special combining characters).
Additional keys you can use to get to additional planes are <SHIFT-LOCK> and <CTRL>. That's more you need.
https://keyman.com/developer/