Pitfalls of pi fonts

In the last decade it has gotten easier to encode symbol fonts  properly. Yet, many symbol fonts are still stuck in the past: they are often just based on a country-specific encoding the designer is familiar with. Unfortunately such hacks can introduce more problems than they solve.Many users want to enter symbol glyphs with their keyboard. A creative and sensible distribution of glyphs on the keyboard is possible - independent of how the physical keyboard looks like. This point is interesting in consideration of on-screen (or even OLED) keyboards, as found in tablet computers.In my talk I'd like to raise the designers' awareness of keyboard  layouts, reveal some secrets about why keyboard input on Windows sucks (and how it can be improved), and present solutions for designers on how to create their own  layouts for symbol fonts.

Back to the programme