[spaky]

I completely agree that as software makers, keyboard makers in particular, we have to be understand how prevalent and important multilingualism is. ASCII and the subsequent long road to Unicode is a fantastic example of this western centric bias.

The Minuum team includes a number of multilingual people; I mix french and english on a daily basis, others on the team speak slavic languages regularly. Similarly being based in Toronto, near the bilingual province of Quebec, our friends and family early user network included many multilingual people.

I think that more than almost any other type of software designers, keyboard makers are acutely aware of the importance and the myriad of issues surrounding multilingual support. We've known since very early on that language support is a major factor that will eventually make or break us.

For us, each new language actually brings a surprising number of exciting new technical challenges. Hopefully we'll be able to gain insights from the process and find those "few smart things" that can be done to get you from 5 keyboards to 1.

[omaranto]

Funny you mentioned Québec when you're in Toronto: I wouldn't be surprised if there were more multilingual people in the GTA as there are in all of Québec.

[slaman]

Most Québecois speak both French and English, but I get what you're saying.

Toronto is so multicultural it doesn't make sense to claim proximity to Quebec as a language bonus.

[spaky]

I meant to suggest that between toronto's multiculturalism and Quebec's bilingualism we had a lot of early users who were multilingual. Sorry if that was unclear.