Characters

The characters to be mapped to the keys are categorized in order to to give some sense of priority when it comes to positioning them on the keyboard. Below is a summary of the categories and the characters contained in each. Please check the respective pages for more detailed information.

Initially, most of the information on this page comes from recommendations of Robert Bringhurst in his book The Elements of Typographic Style.

First-Class Characters

The first-class characters are all the characters deemed necessary to produce all of the listed languages. This includes all the required letters, numerals, and diacriticals, plus a decent set of punctuation. All first-class characters must require only a single keystroke.

Aside from the standard letters and numerals on a qwerty keyboard, the following characters are also first-class: þ, Þ, ß, ð, Ð, µ, æ, Æ, œ, Œ, ı, ȝ, Ȝ, ¡, £, $, €, %, °, &, ª, º, *, (, ), †, ‡, -, −, –, —, ×, ÷, =, ¶, [, ], §, :, ;, “, ”, ‘, ’, «, », ‹, ›, ,, ., ·, ¿, /, …, •, ¤, +

As are the following diacritics: ˝, ´, `, slashthrough, ˚, ¨, ˆ, ˜, ¸, ˇ, ˘, ¯, ˛, ˙, dotunder, linethrough, hook, horn, hoi, underscore

Second-Class Characters

The second-class characters are useful for typography and as punctuation, however, they are not as necessary as the first-class characters. This distinction has two consequences:

  1. The second-class characters may require more than one keystroke;
  2. and their position on the keyboard is secondary to that of the first-class characters.

The second-class characters are: ə, viniculum, ′, |, ¬, 〈, 〉, >, <, ^, ~, {, }, „, ∥, ldbracket, rdbracket, ♮, ♭, ≠, ±, #, ♯, ‰, ☞, ❧, ©, ƒ, ®, ™, ¥

Additional Characters

Additional characters are typographic and mathematic characters that we can use to fill the remaining spaces on the keyboard. This allows us to maximize the characters possible via combination.

Legacy Characters

The legacy characters are the ASCII characters that aren’t needed in a modern system, but must be kept around because of their use as control characters, in programming languages, and for familiarity.

The legacy characters are: - (replace with hyphen and subtraction), _, `, \, ", ' (replace with prime), ^ (replace with logical and).