From: "Patrick Andries" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > From: Philippe Verdy > > From: Patrick Andries > > > From: Murray Sargent > > > >Patrick asks: > > > > > «Q. How can I input any Unicode character if I know its > > > > > hexadecimal code?» > > > > > > > >You could use an app that supports the Alt+x input method (like Word or > > > >WordPad) and then copy the result into an app that doesn't. > > > > > > [PA] No, this is not an available option; I want to be able to input > > > those characters in XMetal. > > > > Then it is a request for enhancement to address to the author of XMetal. > > This is not an issue of Unicode. > > Funnily enough, I thought I wanted to input Unicode characters. > > Also, this is precisely the question posed and answered - partly in my > case - here http://www.unicode.org/faq/font_keyboard.html#3 (yes a Unicode > FAQ).
This is a FAQ that just answers to some existing platform implementation solutions. May be, that FAQ item #3 should contain the link to the MSKB tool on MSDN... But basically, the purpose of this FAQ page is related to fonts, not to input methods, despite of its title which includes the term "keyboard". It's true that there's no real good FAQ item related to input methods and keyboard drivers. Guidelines for implementing input methods should be focusing on allowing a user to enter a string in a logical order, while also maintaining the canonical equivalence with the normalized form that would be created with another input method. As long as input methods do not insert their own formating controls in the generated Unicode sequence, they will interoperate to create text which is basically canonically equivalent to the text produced by a distinct implementation. Input methods are not required to return a normalized string (that's the job of editors or file I/O filters which can work more globally on the whole text, not on separate characters as seen in input methods and keyboard drivers). Unicode does not standardize the "correct" input key sequences needed to generate a Unicode string, as this is left to implementations, and platform-specific user interface guidelines.
