Hey.

I've had opened Debian bug #777643 (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=777643), today, but since that was immediately closed without any specific analysis of the potential issue, I think it's appropriate to report it here as well.

Some keyboard layouts (for example the Germans) use the · (U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT) character on some key-combination (here it is AltGr+;).

Since its on the same key as × (U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN) and with respect to its location on the keyboard close to the other arithmetical operands, I thought that this might be intended to be used as the dot multiplication sign, as it is preferably used in most in most non-Anglophone countries
at dot, rahter than the cross (i.e. × (U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN)).

The character which should be used for the dot multiplication sign, is however · (U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT), as also stated by Unicode itself:
“for multiplication U+22C5 DOT OPERATOR is preferred”.


In the meantime I've also had some off-list discussion with Steve Langasek, where we not agreed about the usage of U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT.
Some resource here is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct , which (AFAIU) implies that the only real canonical usages of U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT are in Catalan languages and Franco-Provençal, while all the other examples Wikipedia gives for using the Interpunct also gave more appropriate Unicode characters for these.


I should emphasise that I do not demand any change, I just think that this might be an accidental misuse which upstream should perhaps clarify.
Surprisingly, on the Debian side I was quite heavily attacked just because of bringing this up and collecting arguments in favour or against, with the insults that are found on the public records being harmless in comparison to what I got off-list (and I'm obviously not referring to a reasonable polite person like Steve here).
So please don't get that bug report wrong... it's just a friendly meant pointer.

Some valid point which was brought up on the Debian list just before is, that changing the layout might lead people who use these key within passwords into troubles.
OTOH, this would also apply to many other schema changes I've found in your git log.

I'm personally not aware about whether or not there is any large use of U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT, where really the MIDDLE DOT is desired and not just used in place of a more appropriate character.


Cheers,
Chris.