Saundspel, the phonology forum, is a discussion group for those interested in spelling by sound, applied linguistics, writing systems, history, and spelling reform.
If you have a language related question, post it here. If you post something not language related, you risk being banned from the group.
The Saundspel discussion group was originally set up to build a machine readable IPA analog for transcribing English speech. SAMPA* was available but not designed as a writing system. ENgliS , Unigraf, and similar notations are about as close as we have come to finding an easily read and typed way to represent 40+ sounds with a 26 character (ASCII) keyboard. An improved orthography for World English (see euro-english) remains a key but not the sole concern of this group. [ more -includes 20 links]
This was posted on Alt.Language....     English spelling is not unphonetic in any bad way. It is unphonetic in just the right way, like French. Consider
  Spelling Rules see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C BBC: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/talk/questions/spelling-rules  The
Books on linguistics and the English language   Changing English (edited by D. Graddol, D.Leith, J. Swann, M. Rhys & J. Gillen) Using English (edited by J.