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1 We are aware of four script families used in Africa: Latin,
Arabic, Ethiopic and Brahmic. We currently have keyboard layouts for the other
script families and languages. It appears we may need to produce an African
Arabic keyboard with additional keys based on the material on the Bisharat
website. For the moment, we’ll work with the Latin-based material.
2 As far as keyboards go, most Latin-based scripts work quite
well using the English alphabet in a familiar Qwerty format plus additional
letters and diacritic marks.
3 Leaving the standard keyboard in situ and building on it
preserves existing skill levels for text entry, lends a certain comfort level
to the new technology, and provides for the occasional entry of English text or
loanwords. (For example, even if a language has no “w”, it’s a useful feature for the www).
4 Given the Qwerty layout as a foundation, we have found that
simply listing the few additional letters above the keyboard on a new row in
dictionary order is sufficient for a newly-introduced language. With
experience, users will provide countless useful suggestions for re-working the
layout.
5 The Bisharat website lists over 100 languages under 21
country headings using Latin scripts. We list here several ways for putting
these keyboards together and doubtless other suggestions will come forth.
6 Dedicated
Individual Language Keyboards. We can create a dedicated keyboard for each language
without too much difficulty and will do so if that’s what people want.
However, a quick examination of the symbol lists shows that many of these
languages have identical or very similar symbol inventories, suggesting
that we collapse the 100+ languages into a smaller number of keyboard
layouts.7 Major
Language Keyboards. A common approach with product development is to take the largest
potential markets and produce something for those only and not worry about
the rest. However, our ultimate goal with this product is to provide
everyone with the ability to use a computer in their own language.
Nonetheless, it may be useful to have some keyboards for individual major
languages. We would appreciate suggestions for which languages should have
individual templates.8 Language
Groups. In
other areas of the world, we found it reasonable to create group templates
for related languages (examples: Romance, Germanic, Slavic, etc). However,
the patterns of linguistic distribution in Africa appear quite
different. Following linguistic
categories with keyboards for Bantu, Niger Congo, Nilo Saharan, Cushitic,
etc. probably has little relevance to the actual distribution patterns and
needs of product users.9 Georgaphic Groups. It appears the current lists are the result of painstaking
earlier work and that organization of the material by political boundary
was the simplest and clearest presentation for all. It also reduces the
total number of keyboard layouts to a very workable number.
10 Using the
geographic approach, we built a single draft template based on the summary
table as a catch all. Then, we created a draft keyboard layout for each of the
countries listed. Clearly, we will need to expand this as material for other
countries becomes available to us. We will also support upgrades to the product
for corrections and revisions.