Text input with keyboard, via input methods (was: turtle ??)

[Rustom Mody]

On Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 12:59:10 PM UTC+5:30, Ben Finney wrote:
> Marko Rauhamaa  writes:
> 
> > BTW, typing any useful Unicode character is a major unsolved problem.
> 
> You typed a good number of Unicode characters in that sentence alone.
> ASCII is a simple subset of Unicode.
> 
> I suppose you meant to refer to typing some character not mapped to a
> single keystroke on a US-English keyboard kayout.
> 
> You're right, that is a major problem.
> 
> As for how solved it is, that depends on what you're hoping for as a
> solution.
> 
> The conventional solution, which I find to be quite useful for typing
> characters from a great many different writing systems, is an
> <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method> customised to
> particular writing systems.
> 
> My primary input method is one which lets me type typical English text
> and also easily input a broad range of useful characters with a few
> mnenonic two- or three-key sequences.
> 
> > I have created this text file that contains a lot of unicode
> > characters with their code points. Every once in a while I have to
> > open the file and copy and paste a character to, say, a Usenet
> > posting. Cumbersome but necessary.
> 
> Hopefully your operating system has a good input method system, with
> many input methods available to choose from. May you find a decent
> default there.

I believe that these discussions would be useful (and the current state
of input methods better-ed if we distinguish different levels of input-methods.

Basically ranging from low-setup, hi-perchar cost to hi-setup low-perchar cost

At the one extreme we have
use google, hunt around, cut-paste

At the other use a special hardware keyboard
[I believe Steven had sometime showed something like this
https://plus.google.com/102786751626732213960/posts/2uJzHw1JHeN?pid=5802841322291932386&oid=102786751626732213960
]

In between these two extremes we have many possibilities
- ibus/gchar etc
- compose key
- alternate keyboard layouts

Using all these levels judiciously seems to me a good idea...