Open Road

One of the sessions at the Open Road Conference this year was on Language Enablement. The presentation slides are available at http://www.openroad.net.au/conferences/2008/papers/woc.pdf.

Current language enablement work here is focusing on Harari (an Ethiopian language) and a range of Sudanese languages, including Dinka, Nuer, Bari and others.

The language enablement work is focusing on identification and adaption of fonts and development of keyboard layouts for the languages. For languages we already have keyboard layouts for, those keyboard layouts are being reviewed and enhanced to make the keyboard layouts more suitable for the orthographies of the languages in question.

The Harari review is the first scheduled to be completed. Keyboard layouts and tools are being developed for the Ethiopic, Latin and Arabic orthographies. A Latin orthography has been developed to use in the Harari Ethnic schools in Melbourne to facilitate teaching Harari children their mother language. Tools will be developed to allow text written in the Latin orthography to be automatically converted to the Ethiopic or Arabic orthographies. The work on the Latin and Ethiopic solutions are complete and are currently being tested. Work on the Arabic orthography solution will commence soon.

Were possible keyboard layout solutions for Tavulesoft Keyman, Keyboard Manager for Linux (KMFL), Win32 keyboard drivers and MacOS XML keyboard layouts are being developed.

The Dinka and Nuer keyboards are being reviewed and enhanced.

A Bari keyboard layout is under development, and a generic Sudanese keyboard layout designed to accommodate up to 30 minority languages is also under development.

More information when each of the language solutions become available.

There is an increasing number of Humanitarian entrants from the ethnic groups of Myanmar (Burma). Currently the Open Road project is not focusing on these languages, since a number of projects are underway overseas to provide Unicode 5.1 font and input solutions for Mon, Shan and the Karen languages: the Padauk and PinLonMyanmar projects.

I’ll post more information as it becomes available.

If you have any queries about the keyboard layouts we are developing, or if your languages currently require solutions feel free to contact the Open Road team.