Re: [Graphite-devl] Many keyboard problems fixed

[Peter_Constable sil org]

On 09/06/2002 02:47:14 PM Edward Cherlin wrote:

>An IPA keyboard would be very helpful.

What would you want in terms of a layout? There are some generic IPA 
layouts around, at least two that I know of. (Within a few days, we should 
have an interim IPA font -- we're working on a more fully featured Latin / 
Cyrillic font -- available on our web site along with a Keyman IPA input 
method. I've also done some work for Brian Macwhinney at Carnegie Mellon 
to develop an IPA layout based on one that Hank Rogers at U of Toronto did 
for use with a custom legacy encoding (I was doing it during some down 
time, and got about 80% done, but I think Brian was going to finish the 
rest).

But I think generic IPA layouts are of limited usefulness. If someone is 
working on languages from a particular family, they'd probably prefer a 
layout tailored to suit those languages. Of course, a generic layout can 
be useful for certain people with only occasional needs, and they are much 
less likely to need less commonly used symbols (e.g. most of the 
diacritics).


>Should we
>set up a mailing list specifically for keyboard development?

I assume people are aware of the Keyman discussion list. Of course, it's 
focused specifically on Keyman.


>I assume that
>it would be possible (though certainly not trivial) to translate a
>Keyman definition for a Windows keyboard into Microsoft's C language
>keyboard source format and get it compiled

I've made sure Marc Durdin saw your message, so perhaps he'll comment on 
that. He has mentioned the possibility of adding the ability to KM 
Developer to compile Windows native keyboard DLLs, though I suspect that 
one may have to limit the mechanisms that are used in the Keyman language 
-- I've never looked at MS's keyboard source format, but I suspect Keyman 
allows one to do many things that MS's keyboard source format does not. In 
fact, I'm sure that must be the case -- apart from deadkey support, I 
highly doubt the MS format allows to have context-sensitive rules, 
especially ones based on the data content rather than the preceding keying 
sequence.



- Peter


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable sil org>