On 02/22/2002 05:26:53 PM Yaap Raaf wrote: >I've also been looking at Tavultesoft's Keyman, but there are no >readymade keyboards available for the purpose. I don't know >how complicated it is to develop one.
For simple behaviours, it can be quite easy; e.g. if you just need to assign Devanagari characters to keys on a US keyboard without any additional behaviour considerations, there's a wizard with a visual UI that you can use. If you need, though, you can create fairly sophisticated input methods. How difficult it is depends on how complex the required behaviour is, but the learning curve is **far** less than learning to program in C or to use the Windows DDK. And I've never heard of anyone complaining that a Keyman input method could not keep up with a user's typing speed. BTW, Keyman 6 (in development) will support Microsoft's Text Services Framework, and also (I think) rules that are sensitive to both preceding and following context. That should make it possible to create fairly polished text-editing user interfaces even for Indic scripts or Arabic, where there are complex character/presentation relationships involved. (E.g. I'd guess that Arabic users would find it less distracting if characters appeared initially in non-final forms and only change to final forms after a word-breaking or non-joining character has been entered. If that's true, I can envision implementing that without too much difficulty using Keyman.) - 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: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
