Subject: [saag] Survey of I18N input method characteristics?

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:45:43 -0500

Is there any survey of input method characteristics regarding I18N?

Here's what *I* know from experience:

 - Solaris, Linux, Windows, MacOS X -- all produce composed for Latin
script characters in UTF-8 locales.  I'm pretty sure that at least
some of these OSes' input methods produce composed output, but not
necessarily NFC, or at least they make no effort to normalize (it's
one thing to produce composed codepoints for things like &aacute; and
another to normalize raw Unicode codepoints entered by the user as
such).
 - The details of how to enter non-ASCII characters vary widely by
operating system, and often there are multiple choices of input
methods.
 - Solaris and Linux tend to allow choice of locale at the login
screen.  MacOS X Lion and Windows 7 XP Home do not, at least not in
the default setup.  It's unclear whether or how one can enable one or
another input method at the login screen.

 - Android makes non-ASCII Latin character input quite easy, and it
too seems to output composed sequences.  I suspect this is generally
the case for all smartphone/tablet OSes.  I expect that iOS' input
method also produces composed output -- for Latin characters at least.

What I don't know:

 - Whether the same holds for other scripts.  E.g., is Hangul (Korean)
generally output [by input methods] in composed or decomposed form?
What about other non-Latin scripts that require normalization?

 - Whether input methods are more consistent at least regarding how
one enters non-ASCII for non-Latin scripts.

It seems to me that a more complete survey would be useful.  Perhaps
we can have people report what their I18N input method experiences are
beyond mine?  What would be a good way to run such a survey?

Nico
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