Hooligan
Squirrel King of Arms; Cunstaval to Maricopa
Posts: 7,325
Talossan Since: 7-12-2005
Motto: PRIMA CAPIAM POCULA
Baron Since: 11-20-2005
Count Since: 9-8-2012
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Post by Hooligan on Jan 5, 2012 23:55:14 GMT -6
Fellow Ladintschen -- With the help of Donald Triplett (working the Mac version), the CÚG is proud (?) to present a new and improved (?) version of a keyboard layout you can install on your PC or Mac to ease (?) the typing of our national language. We say "improved" but only you can say if that's the case; the original version has been out there (for PC only) for a little over two years now, after we had much discussion and debate here on Witt. Essentially, the Y key becomes the Þ (since Y is not used in Talossan, but you can get it with RightAlt-Y...or in Mac-language, Option-Y), and you can get the umlaut-marked vowels using the similar (RightAlt or Option) trick. That trick also is used to get Ç, ß, and Ð. To create vowels marked with diacriticals other than umlauts, simply use the Ctrl key while typing an apostrophe (for the acute accent), a backtick (for the grave accent), or a caret (for the circumflex), and then (releasing those keys) typing the vowel letter. This same Ctrl-key trick also can be used to get umlauts (use Ctrl-colon or Ctrl-double-quote; they both work). [Those four are the only diacriticals used in modern Talossan, but there are other diacritical marks you can use as well, Ctrl-# is the macron, Ctrl-( is the breve, Ctrl-) is the bolle, Ctrl-/ is the slash, Ctrl-minus is the stroke, Ctrl-~ is the tilde, and Ctrl-comma is the cedilla.] The Talossan currency marks are available at Alt-3 and Alt-#. As you can see in the graphic below, a great many other characters have been made available, not that they're Talossan specifcally, but simply because we could: BLUE indicates the characters you get while typing with the RightAlt (or Option) key held down, and RED indicates any key that, if typed with the Ctrl key held down, waits for you to then type the next key in order to generate a character (e.g., the "dead keys" discussed above, used to create letters adorned with diacritical marks). The layout is completely documented (listing all the things it can do that are not shown above) in a PDF found in the package you can download and unzip by clicking here. Anyone who installs and uses the keyboard layout is encouraged to provide feedback and comments! Hool
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Post by Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h on Jan 5, 2012 23:58:47 GMT -6
Well-done! This is a first.
GV
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Post by Ián B. Anglatzarâ on Jan 6, 2012 4:11:19 GMT -6
Excellent! I'll report back when I have tried the (Mac) layout - which also means you will know if there any issues with a non-US system (although Swedish is another Latin script, so any internationalization bugs are unlikely to show up for me).
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Post by D. N. Vercáriâ on Jan 6, 2012 6:11:47 GMT -6
It is not that useful when you're on a German keyboard with its standard access to umlauts, the sharp s (ß) and composite keys for French accents. I'd need to put the C-cedille, E and I "trema", the thorn and the "soft thorn" (cough, what's this D- called?) somewhere, though.
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Hooligan
Squirrel King of Arms; Cunstaval to Maricopa
Posts: 7,325
Talossan Since: 7-12-2005
Motto: PRIMA CAPIAM POCULA
Baron Since: 11-20-2005
Count Since: 9-8-2012
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Post by Hooligan on Jan 6, 2012 10:08:45 GMT -6
Deet --
I would be happy to make you a version of the German keyboard that supplies the missing letters (the "soft thorn", as you call it, is called "eth").
Interestinlgly, if you look back at the original version of the Talossan keyboard I created in 2009, Ä, Ö, and Ü were all keypresses in their own right (no need for Alt, etc.) and were on the right-side of the keyboard (to the right of P, on that same row of the US keyboard) as you have it on the German keyboard.
I (and others) have done a lot of thinking about the layout changes made to the US keyboard, and still am not sure it's necessarily the best. For example, I intend to revisit an alternative way ("combining diacriticals" rather than the use of "dead keys") to get accented (etc.) letters. And the debate on whether to put Þ as a full letter and relegate the (admittedly non-Talossan, but then, so many Talossans type non-Talossan...a lot) Y to an Alt combination is a constant back-and-forth. So, while not wishing to muddy the waters, if anyone is interested in adaptations on the one that we've decided to release, just let me know; it may even be something I've already been toying with.
Hool
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Post by D. N. Vercáriâ on Jan 6, 2012 11:15:10 GMT -6
Technically, it shouldn't be rocket science to write a "Talossan extension" keytab for the German keyboard under Linux, the operating system that I'm using most of the time. It would just be a matter of negotiations to choose the keys (and key combinations) where the lacking characters should be put. I'm thinking of CTRL-right/e/d/c for e:, eth, c-cedille and CTRL-left/i for the i:; then it would be easy to use the shift key for uppercase letters as well. The thorn would possibly be CTRL-right/t . Anyway, I'm not in a hurry to get it done.
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Hooligan
Squirrel King of Arms; Cunstaval to Maricopa
Posts: 7,325
Talossan Since: 7-12-2005
Motto: PRIMA CAPIAM POCULA
Baron Since: 11-20-2005
Count Since: 9-8-2012
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Post by Hooligan on Jan 6, 2012 11:17:13 GMT -6
Anyway, I'm not in a hurry to get it done. Yeah. No rush or anything. I myself have no issues using the unmodified US keyboard and I type as much or more Talossan than anyone! If you ever do anything, though, the CÚG would be happy to make it available on the "Online Resources" page of www.cuglang.com Hool
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Post by D. N. Vercáriâ on Jan 6, 2012 11:21:39 GMT -6
Ah, and is there a n-tilde in the Talossan alphabet?
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Eiric Biançéu
Cras perveniat ad astra via
Posts: 886
Talossan Since: 11-7-2011
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Post by Eiric Biançéu on Jan 6, 2012 11:37:01 GMT -6
I don't if this will help but here are all of the alt characters I could find, all you do is hold the alt key and type the appropriate number sequence: ü 129 ä 132 ö 148 Ä 142 Ü 154 ß 225 Ç 128 é 130 â 131 à 133 å 134 ç 135 ê 136 ë 137 è 138 ï 139 î 140 ì 141 Å 143 É 144 æ 145 Æ 146 ô 147 ò 149 û 150 ù 151 ÿ 152 Ö 153 µ 998 ß 225
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Hooligan
Squirrel King of Arms; Cunstaval to Maricopa
Posts: 7,325
Talossan Since: 7-12-2005
Motto: PRIMA CAPIAM POCULA
Baron Since: 11-20-2005
Count Since: 9-8-2012
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Post by Hooligan on Jan 6, 2012 11:41:51 GMT -6
Well, in Classic Talossan, n-tilde is seen, but the Arestada of 2007 removed it from Modern Talossan. I have of course made sure that the keyboard layout provides a way to type all the letters of Classic (and even Archaic) Talossan. Here's kinda a history of our language's orthography: - Archaic (long ago disused):
- ă (a with breve; abandoned in August 1993, but again sanctioned, though not required, in 2012, with the long-used alternative â recognised as a substitute), a silent indicator of a feminine-gender noun
- ĝ (g with circumflex; abandoned by the CÚG in 1991), which was used to mark the (now extremely few) words in which g is pronounced as Talossan xh (as in English age). Most words using a "hard g" were respelled in 1997 using xh, and those few that were not (such as regeu, regipäts, etc.) now simply contain an unadorned g, and you just have to know to pronounce them as xh.
- ş (s with cedilla; abandoned before the 1983 formation of the CÚG), which is the English "sh" sound (words that had used this letter were long ago respelled using sch)
- ţ (t with cedilla; abandoned before the 1983 formation of the CÚG), long ago replaced by ts, which is how that letter sounded
- Classsic (abandoned by the CÚG in 2007):
- å (a with bolle), only used in a very small number of words, and indicating the allophone of a heard in English law (Modern Talossan removed the bolle from the few words that had used this letter)
- ê (e with circumflex), the stressmarked version of the abandoned vowel ë, which indicates in Classic Talossan the allophone of e heard in English egg. (Also, in Classic Talossan, ë is used as a silent mark at the end of the infinitive form of verbs that conjugate irregularly in at least one of their forms.)
- î (i with circumflex), a vowel sound found in Russian that absolutely no Ladintsch other than King Ben could pronounce, which even he long decried as needing to be removed from Talossan. Words using this vowel were respelled in 2007 (în became in, tîmp became temp, etc.). The most ubiquitous appearance of this vowel is in the Talossan present participle ending (-înd in Classic Talossan, -ind in Modern Talossan) which since 1992 has been exceptionally pronounced, as if spelled -ant.
- ñ (n with tilde). Even Classic Talossan had replaced most instances of this letter with ng (which is the sound it makes, as in English sing and hunger). This letter also appeared in the trigraph gñh, which in Modern Talossan is seen as gnh (pronounced as the Spanish letter ñ as heard in English canyon and onion; note that this was gn from 2007-12).
- ø (o with slash), which even in Classic Talossan is written ö in all but two words
- Modern (surviving, sometimes with altered meaning in the case of marked vowels):
- a-z (except y, with á and à [etc.] being the stressmarked versions of the vowels)
- ä ö ü (with â ô û their stressmarked versions per the 2007 Arestada, but those were abandoned in 2012)
- ë and ï (e and i with trema indicating diæresis)
- ß ("eseta"), which can also be written ss in all cases
- þ ("thorn"), which can also be written tg in all cases
- ð ("eth"), though this letter seems to be dying, as it is always replaceable by d
- ç (c with cedilla)
Hool
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Post by D. N. Vercáriâ on Jan 6, 2012 12:55:42 GMT -6
Eiric - thanks for posting this. Unfortunately these alt-three digits sequences are exclusively a windows thing. As for my idea, this CTRL-something solution was a too quickly thought-up idea. I forgot that CTRL sequences are used for certain system purposes, like CTRL-C is for sending a break sequence to a running program. And of course I forgot that I'm with the bunch of people who are still clinging to the classic orthography of Talossan , therefore I will need many more diacritics like the a-ring and what not. Anyway, I'll just have to replace letters like ŧ, ŋ, đ etc, that coincidenally are in my default keytab. As well as the correct German „quotes“, or the »French« ones, which I never apply.
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Hooligan
Squirrel King of Arms; Cunstaval to Maricopa
Posts: 7,325
Talossan Since: 7-12-2005
Motto: PRIMA CAPIAM POCULA
Baron Since: 11-20-2005
Count Since: 9-8-2012
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Post by Hooligan on Jan 6, 2012 12:59:48 GMT -6
Deet --
I made sure that you can get å (and all other Classic letters) without any more trouble than getting â or à. Typing Ctrl-) then the a will give you å. (Getting ñ is done the same way: Ctrl-~ then n.)
And if you (or anyone) ever want to type Archaic letters, even, Ctrl-( then the a will give you ă. :-)
[I went by what seems to be the standard key chosen on other international keyboard layouts to generate each of the different diacritical marks -- the bolle ("ring") is typically formed by Ctrl-) and the breve by Ctrl-( and the macron by Ctrl-#, etc.]
And yeah, the Ctrl key can only be used for such purposes (without screwing up things like copy, paste, etc.) for non-letter characters.
Hool
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Post by D. N. Vercáriâ on Jan 6, 2012 13:29:45 GMT -6
Hool, âàá - vowels with "French" accents are easily generated on a standard German keyboard. But CTRL-( is producing anything but broken fingers on my keyboard. Anyway, don't worry, I know it's easy to add "foreign" characters to a standard keyboard layout under Linux. In fact, I once added some characters of the Turkish Latin, but as this happened loooooooong ago, I forgot where (i.e., in which configuration files) I'll have to insert the lines that do the tweaking.
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Post by Ián B. Anglatzarâ on Jan 7, 2012 5:46:28 GMT -6
It works fine for me. But just like Dieter, my native Swedish layout gives me most of those glyphs, so the disadvantages of using the Talossan layout outweigh the advantages.
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Óïn Ursüm
Posts: 1,032
Talossan Since: 3-10-2009
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Post by Óïn Ursüm on Jan 7, 2012 10:47:35 GMT -6
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