Why UTF-8/16 character encodings?

[Wyatt]

On Sunday, 26 May 2013 at 21:23:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I have been thinking about this idea of a "reprogrammable 
> keyboard", in
> that the keys are either a fixed layout with LCD labels on each 
> key, or
> perhaps the whole thing is a long touchscreen, that allows 
> arbitrary
> relabelling of keys (or, in the latter case, complete dynamic
> reconfiguration of layout). There would be some convenient way 
> to switch
> between layouts, say a scrolling sidebar or roller dial of some 
> sort, so
> you could, in theory, type Unicode directly.
>
> I haven't been able to refine this into an actual, 
> implementable idea,
> though.
>
I've given this domain a fair bit of thought, and from my 
perspective you want to throw hardware at a software problem.  
Have you ever used a Japanese input method?  They're sort of a 
good exemplar here, wherein you type a sequence and then hit 
space to cycle through possible ways of writing it.  So "ame" can 
become, あめ, 雨, 飴, etc.  Right now, in addition to my learning, I 
also use it for things like α (アルファ) and Δ (デルタ).  It's limited, 
but...usable, I guess.  Sort of.

The other end of this is TeX, which was designed around the idea 
of composing scientific texts with a high degree of control and 
flexibility.  Specialty characters are inserted with 
backslash-escapes, like \alpha, \beta, etc.

Now combine the two:  An input method that outputs as usual, 
until you enter a character code which is substituted in real 
time to what you actually want.
Example:
"values of \beta will give rise to dom!" composes as
"values of β will give rise to dom!"

No hardware required; just a smarter IME.  Like maybe this one: 
http://www.andonyar.com/rec/2008-03/mathinput/ (I'm honestly not 
yet sure how mature or usable that one is as I'm a UIM user, but 
it does serve as a proof of concept).