Re: DOCBOOK: character entities for keycap symbols?

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Sunthar.Visuvalingam@informit.com was heard to say:
| Is there a set of character entities that represent keycap
| symbols commonly used in computer books? In this instance, I'm
| specifically looking for the Control Key Symbol of Apple MAC
| Keyboard.

Not that I know of. I've seen several "keycap" fonts, but I've
never imagined representing these things with entities. I'd be
more inclined to tweak my stylesheet so that <keycap> did the
right thing (probably by selecting an appropriate keycap font :-).

(Does Unicode have characters for these things? It shouldn't,
IMHO, but that hasn't stopped them in the past :-)

And if you want these things to work online as well as in print,
you'd almost certainly have to turn them into graphics of some
sort.  But going directly from a font glyphs to graphics can be
done fairly mechanically.

| If such a set does not already exist, the DocBook activity
| might be the best place to come up with a comprehensive list
| of character entities to represent commonly used keycap
| symbols.

Egad! No! That's a job for the keyboard manufacturers, or some
other group. It has only a peripheral bearing on DocBook, IMHO.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>      | First time surrealists are often
http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/ | confused by the similarities
Member, DocBook Editorial Board    | between fish and telephones.