Keyboard workgroup

Summary

Computing devices have become increasingly personal and increasingly affordable to the point that they are now within reach of most people on the planet. The diverse linguistic requirements of the world’s 7.4 billion people do not scale to traditional models of software development. In response to this, standards-based solutions that empower specialist and community input, such as CLDR, have emerged as a means of balancing the needs of language communities with the technologies of major platform and service providers.

Text input is a core component of most computing experiences and is most commonly achieved using a keyboard (hardware or software). However, keyboard support for most of the world’s languages is either completely missing or often does not adequately support the input needs of language communities. Improving text input support for minority scripts is an essential part of Unicode adoption.

The Keyboard workgroup is a collaboration in CLDR with the goal of establishing a definitive set of keyboard data in CLDR.

Goals of the workgroup

• • Build on the existing LDML definition for keyboards (UTR#35 part 7) to be able to define core keyboard-based text input requirements for the world’s languages

  • Evaluate and augment where necessary, Unicode Extensions for BCP47 (http://cldr.unicode.org/index/bcp47-extension)

  • Extend the repository of keyboard layout data in LDML having unique identifiers based on Unicode Extensions for BCP47

  • Create a mapping between locales in CLDR and appropriate keyboard layouts, with a default or preferred “core” keyboard layout

  • Provide a reference implementation that consumes CLDR keyboard data and renders it in standard target representations (e.g., hardware keyboard, mobile phone keyboard, tablet keyboard), including any transform data

If you want to be engaged in this workgroup, please contact the CLDR technical committee members with Unicode contacts form.