> except that keyboard layouts and input (esp. on mobile devices) is an even bigger mess and even more fragmented than character encoding.
Encoding was in a similar place 10-15 years ago. Almost every publisher in Bengali had their own encoding, font, and keyboard layout - the bigger ones built their own in-house systems, while the smaller ones used systems that were built or maintained by very small operators. To make things even more complicated, these systems needed a very specific combination of operating system and page layout software to work. Now the situation is quite better with most publishers switching to Unicode, at least for public facing content.
With input methods, I expect to see at least some consolidation - I don't necessarily think we need standards here, but there will clear leaders that emerge. Yes, keyboard layouts are influenced by Unicode code-points, but only in a specific context. Usually when people who already have experience with computers start to type in Bengali (or any other Indic language), they use a phonetic keyboard, which is influenced mostly by the QWERTY layout. Then, if they write a significant amount, they find that the phonetic input is not very efficient (typing kha everytime to get খ is painful), and they switch to a system where there's a one-to-one mapping between commonly used characters and keys. This does tend to have a relationship between defined codepoints and keys, but that's probably because the defined codepoints cover the basic characters in the script (so in your case, ্য would need to have a separate key, which I think is fine). There will still be awkward gestures, but that's again, a part of adjusting to the new medium. No one bats an eyelid when hitting "enter" to get a newline - but when we learn to write on paper, we never encounter the concept of a carriage-return.
> I have literally never once heard the jophola referred to as a viram and a য
Interesting - I guess we have somewhat different mental models. For me, I did think of jophola as a "hoshonto + jo", possibly because of the "jo" connection, and this was true even before I started to mess around with computers or Unicode. I always thought about jophola as a "yuktakshar", and if it's a "yuktakshar", I always mentally broke it down to its constituents.
> [...] especially when looking at some incredibly obscure and/or antiquated modifiers that are given their own characters
I think those exist because of backwards compatibility reasons. For Bengali I think Unicode made the right choice to start with the minimum number of code points (based on what ISCII had at that time). As others have pointed out elsewhere in the thread - it is an evolving standard, and additions are possible. Khanda-ta did get accepted, and contrary to what many think, non-consortium members can provide their input (for example, I am acknowledged in the khanda-ta document I linked to earlier, and all I did was participate in the mailing list and provide my suggestions and some evidence).
> Out of curiosity, where in Bengal are you from?
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