Just a couple of points:

re /m17 and /m16

1) input software is the best approach, either with or without a physical keyboard.

2) Konyin does not support the Capital Turned V. This character is new in the recently released Unicode 5.0. For Konyin to support it, they'd have to create a new version of their Nigerian keyboard and new versions of the keyboard driver. It is the one problem with the physical keyboard approach. It locks Konyin into sopporting specific languages and isn't easy to support additional languages outside the character repetoire the keyboard supports.

New characters are still being added to Unicode to support Africa minority languages. Capital Turned V is one example. Not Koyin's fault, nor an error on their part.

Given the alphabet for Ibibio in /m11 a couple of observations of the Konyin keyboard layout wrt Ibibio:

Most letters are assigned to a separate key. Four letters would require typing a base character and a combining diacritic: Ạ ạ Ḣ ḣ

As noted elsewhere, the keyboard also does not support the Turned V.

You end up with an interesting situation: mst subdotted vowels will be typed using a single precomposed combining diacritic. The subdoted-a will be entered as a decomposed charcater sequence rather than as a single precomposed character.

This is a limitation of physical keyboards. It is not practical or economic to create a new physical keyboard each time soem one provides documentation for new languages or new character requirements. Thats why virtual keyboards and third party keyboard driver solutions developed and are used in lieu of physical keyboards in many countries.

3) Current versions of Arial Unicode MS and Gentium are suitable for some Nigerian languages, but not all Nigerian languages.


Andrew