Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]

[alister]

On Fri, 08 Apr 2016 20:20:02 -0400, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Apr 2016 11:04:53 -0700 (PDT), Rustom Mody
> <rustompmody at gmail.com> declaimed the following:
> 
>>Its reasonably likely that all our keyboards start QWERT...
>> Doesn't make it a sane design.
>>
> 	It was a sane design -- for early mechanical typewrites. It 
fulfills
> its goal of slowing down a typist to reduce jamming print-heads at the
> platen.* And since so many of us who had formal touch typing training
> probably learned on said mechanical typewriters, it hangs around.
> Fortunately, even though the typewriters at school had European
> dead-keys, we were plain English and I never had to pick them up.
> 
> 	For a few years I did have problems with ()... They were on 
different
> keys (8 and 9, respectively) on old typewriters (the type that also had
> no 1) vs IBM Selectrics (never used by be) and computer terminals...
> 
> 
> 
> * Except I kept jamming two letters of my last name... I and E are
> reached with the same finger on opposite hands, which made a fast
> stroke-pair (compare moving the same finger on both hands to moving
> different fingers).

<pedant Mode on>
the design of qwerty was not to "Slow" the typist bu to ensure that the 
hammers for letters commonly used together are spaced widely apart, 
reducing the portion of trier travel arc were the could jam.
I and E are actually such a pair which is why they are at opposite ends 
of the hammer rack (I doubt that is the correct technical term).
they are on opposite hands to make typing of them faster.
unfortunately as you found it is still possible to jam them if they are 
hit almost simultaneously
<Pedant Mode Off>



-- 
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit.  It begins with the vision to
recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let
go.  It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its
past importance in our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief
that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out.
The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well.  It's hard to
recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process.  It's hard to
learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the
dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there.  The experiences
and the growth are grafted onto our lives.  And when we exit, we can take
ourselves along -- quite gracefully.
		-- Ellen Goodman