1. Standardization supporting cultural diversity 1: Character repertoires, ordering and assignments to the 12-key telephone keypad for European languages and  languages used in Europe Martin Böcker, Karl Ivar Larsson and Bruno von Niman (ETSI STF 300)
20th International Symposium on Human Factors in Telecommunication

2. Agenda Background ETSI STF 300 Overview of the task Methodology
Character repertoires, ordering and keypad assignments
Summary

3. Background to STF 300 The problem:
How to enable people to use ICT in their own language?
Before ES , there was only a standard on assigning ‘A’ to ‘Z’ to the 12-key keypad. The assignment of other Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters was not standardised.

4. Background to STF 300 The problem:
ES defined the assignment of major European languages to the 12-key keypad and defined sorting orders.
Languages covered were those of the European Union countries (status 2006), candidate countries (Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey), and the countries of the European Free Trade Area EFTA (Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) as well as Russia.

5. Character Repertoires and Ordering

6. Overview of the task
Languages not covered so far but to be covered now:
Official languages of the remaining countries (e.g. Croatian and Ukrainian);
Official minority languages of European countries (e.g. Welsh and Sorbian);
Important, but not officially recognised European minority languages (e.g. Basque and Breton);
Important immigrants’ languages spoken in Europe (e.g. Arabic and Urdu);
Other languages of interest to manufacturers (e.g. Hebrew and Pinyin).

7. Overview of the task
Co-operate with key industry players and recognized experts
Update ETSI Standard ”Character repertoires, ordering rules and assignment to the 12-key telephone keypad (European languages)”

8. Overview of the task Devices with telecommunication functionality
the largest consumer product segment in the world
Cultural and linguistic diversity
one of the key strengths of Europe
Easy, correct and efficient text input, search and retrieval via the telephone keypad
a basic user requirement
Takes into account work previously performed
in ETSI, ITU-T, CEN/TC304 and ISO/IEC JTC1

9. Method Identify list of languages to be covered
Initial proposal based on studies
Industry consensus meeting
Initial international round of comments
Voting according to ETSI procedures

10. Character Repertoires and Ordering
Letter repertoires and ordering
Language-independent repertoires and ordering (e.g. Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic)
Language-specific repertoires and ordering
Keypad assignment of digits and letters
Language-independent keypad assignment (e.g. Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic) of digits and letters
Language-specific keypad assignment of digits and letters

11. Letter Repertoires and Ordering
Principles 1
Combine repertoire and ordering information in one table
Provide language-independent tables per script (e.g. Latin, Cyrillic, Greek)

12. Letter Repertoires and Ordering
Principles 2
Describe letters in terms of standardized identifiers:
Letter: Representation of the letter
GSM bit coding
ISO/IEC 6937 coding
ISO/IEC (Unicode) identifier
ISO/IEC (Unicode) name
Order characters according to established standards
E.g. the Latin and Cyrillic language-independent repertoires are ordered according to ENV 13710

13. Letter Repertoires and Ordering
Principles 3
Language-independent repertoires:
Latin: covers all Latin-based letters covered by the scope of the document
Cyrillic: Repertoire according to ISO/IEC :1998 (applies to Bulgarian, Belarussian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian)
Greek-script repertoire is identical with the Greek language-specific repertoire
Develop repertoires for the other scripts included in the scope (e.g. Arabic and Georgian)
Provide minimum Latin subset (“A – Z”) to be used with the non-Latin-based repertoires

14. Letter Repertoires and Ordering

15. Letter Repertoires and Ordering
Principles 4
Language-specific repertoires
List essential alphabet of a particular language and letters typically used in that language (from various recognised sources)
Usage type: A classification of each letter according to the following principles: A: Letters essential to the language B: Letters commonly used in writing the language, but not essential for it
Notes: Indication of special character ordering conditions for the language (explained in table notes at the bottom of the table)

16. Letter Repertoires and Ordering

17. Letter Repertoires and Ordering
Example
Ordering in Czech
ábeti
amoniak
anton
ápoteka
äbeti
bertil …

18. Letter Repertoires and Ordering
Principles 5
Repertoire of digits and special characters
Only one (European) language-independent table of digits and special characters is provided
The need for language-specific tables is to be discussed
The digits and special characters are ordered (at present) according to ISO/IEC resp. CEN ENV 13710

19. Letter Repertoires and Ordering

20. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 6
The keypad assignment tables contain the following information:
Key: the key of the 12-key keypad the respective letters are assigned to
Letter: Representation of the letter
ISO/IEC (Unicode) identifier
ISO/IEC (Unicode) name

21. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 7
If a character is assigned to a key of the 12-key keypad, it shall be assigned to the key specified in the respective table
Letters with diacritical marks are assigned to the same key of the 12-key keypad as their respective basic letters (if existent), i.e. "ä" is is assigned to key "2" because "a" is assigned to "2" according to ITU-T E.161
A character may be additionally assigned to other keys
Complete language-independent and language-specific tables may be implemented in any combination

22. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 8
Non-Latin-based repertoires (e.g. the Greek-language repertoire and the Cyrillic-script repertoire) are assigned together with the minimum Latin-script repertoire
Additional characters not covered by the present document may be assigned to a key
Only tables for the assignment of small letters are specified, capital letters shall be assigned in the same way as the respective small letter

23. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 9
Latin-script letters are assigned in the following order:
Letters assigned to that particular key according to ITU-T E.161 (e.g. "abc" to key "2")
The digit for the respective key according to ITU-T E.161
Type A letters according to the tables in Section 6 (e.g. "ä" on key "2" for German)
Type B letters according to the tables in Section 6 (e.g. "à" on key "2" for German) (e.g. the resulting assignment for key "2" for German is "abc2äà")

24. Keypad Assignment Tables

25. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 10
The language-independent Latin-script assignment:
Letters are assigned to the above-mentioned principles and ordered according to ISO/IEC resp. CEN ENV 13710

26. Keypad Assignment Tables

27. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 11
Non-Latin-based letter (e.g. Greek-script and Cyrillic-script letters) are assigned in the following order:
Letters assigned to that particular key in alphabetic order (e.g. "абвг" to key "2"), alternative assignments have been discussed and discarded
The digit for the respective key according to ITU-T E.161
Latin letters assigned to that particular key according to ITU-T E.161 (e.g. abc to key "2") For example, the resulting assignment for key "2" for Russian is "абвг2abc")

28. Keypad Assignment Tables

29. Keypad Assignment Tables
Principles 12
The characters of the Non-Latin-based scripts (e.g. the Greek-language and the Cyrillic-script tables) are ordered according to ISO/IEC resp. CEN ENV 13710

30. Keypad Assignment Tables

31. Keypad Assignment Tables for Digits and Special Characters
Principles 13
Digits and special characters are addressed in the language-independent table
Language-specific tables are to be discussed
The numbers of the respective keys are assigned according to ITU-T E.161
Currencies are assigned to the ‘*’-key
Mathematical symbols are assigned to the ‘#’-key
The plus-sign (including the functionality as the international access code ’00’) are assigned to the ‘0’-key
All other special characters are assigned to the ‘1’-key

32. Special characters
The full set of special characters specified in the present document (in table 61) must be supported.
In addition, other characters may also be supported.
The order of appearance specified in table 61 is only a recommendation, valid for a language-independent implementation.
Alternative orders of appearance of special characters are allowed.
Language-specific orders of appearance are also allowed (e.g. having the inverted question mark and the inverted exclamation mark used in Spanish higher up in the list, for a Spanish-language implementation).

33. Special characters
The full set of special characters must be accessible via one single entry point. It is recommended that this entry point is the "1" key.
In addition, a device may use different other keys to access different sets of special characters and/or digits. In this case, Rule 1 and Rule 6 must still be followed. Thereby, the possibility to implement language-specific keypad assignments of special characters and digits is made possible.

34. Keypad Assignments

35. Summary
ETSI Standard offers character repertoires, sorting orders and keypad assignments for the major European languages.
STF 300 will update the standard to also cover further European and non-Europen, Latin-based and non-Latin scripted languages including important minority languages.
The standard is an excellent example of work funded by the Commission of the EU, hosted by ETSI and realised by indstrial consensus.