On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:32:48 +0100 Helge Hafting <helge.haft...@hist.no> said:
> Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: > > > i was hoping to be able to keep a SIMPLE ascii qwerty keyboard for as > > much as > > possible - so you can just type and it will work and offer the selections as > > it's trying to guess anyway - it can present the multiple accented versions > > too. this limits the need for special keyboards - doesn't obviate it, but > > allows more functionality out of the box. in the event users explicitly > > select > > an accented char - ie a non-ascii character, it should not "decimate". it > > should try match exactly that char. > > > We will still need to select the correct dictionary for the language > somewhere. It is no more work if this also selects a keyboard layout > adapted to that language. > > I can see why you want a simple keyboard with fewer keys - the keys can > be bigger and so there will be fewer finger-misses. I don't see any > reason why it should be limited to ascii though - that division does not > seem natural to me. > > An example from the Norwegian laguage: The letter ô is rarely used, and > everybody thinks about it as an "o" with a "hat" on it. So this one > fits your scheme - type "o" and "ô" will be suggested in the few cases > where it is appropriate. But the three vowels "æøå" is different. They > are letters of their own, they are not seen as "modifications of a/o", > even if that may be historically correct. These three have their own > names and their own places in the alphabet (after z). An "å" is not > merely an "a with ring", no more than the "E" is an "F" with an extra > line attached. The "ø" is not merely an "o" with a slash either. Many > people don't know that "æ" originated as an "ae" ligature. "æ" and "ae" > can both occur in words, but the pronunciation is different and they are > not interchangeable. > > So when Norwegians type, they expect to see the 29 letters of their > alphabet: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzæøå. "ô" and "é" are sometimes > useful too, but these are just "o" and "e" with modifications. "æøå" > however, are parts of the base alphabet. Just like "abc". A keyboard > without "æøå" is assumed not to support Norwegian. > > I hope things like this will be possible, if a new dictionary format is > realized. It is ok if typing "for" suggests "fôr" as an alternative, but > "før" should not come up unless the user types "f" "ø" "r". In which > case "o" must not be suggested... ok - how do you romanise norwegian then? example. in german ö -> oe, ü -> ue, ß -> ss, etc. - there is a set of romanisation rules that can convert any such char to 1 or more roman letters. i was hoping to be even more lenient with ö -> o being valid too for the lazy :) japanese has romanisation rules - so does chinese... norwegian must (eg æ -> ae for example). if something can be romanised - it can have a romanised match in a dictionary and thus suggest the appropriate matches. of course now the dictionary determines these rules implicitly by content, not by code specifically enforcing such rules. :) but yes - selecting dictionary is needed so selecting a keyboard for that language as well as dictionary is useful. it still adds a few keys - thus squashing the keyboard some more :( i was hoping to avoid that. note - the keyboard is by no means limited to ascii at all - it's perfectly able to have accented/other keys added to layouts - so i'm considering this problem "solved" as its simply a matter of everyone agreeing to make a .kbd for their language - should they need one other than the default qwerty (ascii) one. so from this point of view - that's solved. what isn't done yet is: 1. a kbd being able to hint at wanting a specific dictionary language (or vice-versa). 2. dictionary itself being able to hint to have a specific kbd layout. 3. applications not being able to hint for a specific language for input (and thus dictionary and/or kbd). so there needs to be a tie-in between language, dict and kbd - which one drives what... is the question. it needs to not BREAK things like terminal kbd etc. - ie i can stay with norwegian ad my language but if i select the terminal kbd - it will stay there and not suddenly flip back to the simple kbd layout. number/symbol entry similarly. this bit of things is currently undefined and unimplemented. the other is improved dictionary format. the problem is - if we go make the dict smarter... how on earth do you GENERATE such a dictionary. i sure as hell am not hand-writing a whole dictionary... and i doubt anyone here will - it could be a large community effort to build a full one for each language - but that will take time. you need to enter all words, all matches, conjugations, and then frequency info too. the simple dict english can use is much easier - it can be auto-generated from input text. just throw a (text version) of a book - or newspaper or documentation - it can just index every word it finds and even count frequency usage. thats easy to automate the production of such a dict (and that is why the dict is as it is now - sheer simplicity). -- ------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -------------- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) ras...@rasterman.com _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community