[A12n-Collab] Re: [PALNet-general] Utilities for analyzing keyboards?

["Andrew Cunningham" <andrewc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Don,

heartily agree

at the moment i'l running some
perl scripts across translations of the UDHR. The Yoruba translation was
interesting. Four most frequent characters in the document were the three
combining diacritics (acute, grave and dot-below) and the letter
"i". Would seem to indicate that for Yoruba the combining
diacritics should be on the 1st level of the keyboard rather than the 3rd
level (AltGr).

Languages like Igbo will be interesting.
Normally tone isn't written, but could be. I'd expect Igbo with tone
marking would have a similar high occurrence of combining diacritics.

I intend to run two versions. One with a pre-filter to normalise
to NFD. The second pre-filter to normalise to NFD and then lowercase all
characters.

And run it across the available languages in the
UDHR.

With keyboard layouts, if you assume a QWERTY layout,
there seems to be a number of alternative approaches to designing the
keyboard.

1) reassign alphabetic keys not need by a specific
language. A useful approach for single language keyboards. Add removed
letters to AltGr and Shift+AltGr key sequences

2) reassign
limited use non-alphanumeric keys.

3) reassign limited use
non-alphanumeric characters on primary digit keys.

Various
European keyboards use strategy 2) and 3).

4) Move digits to
AltGr key sequence, and use digit keys for diacritics and other necessary
characters. Assumes users prefer to use number keypads. Used on Microsoft
and IBM keyboard layouts for Vietnamese.

5) deadkey system to
extended Latin characters. Common on some SIL keyboard layouts. I have
occasionally used this approach on some internal projects. We have a
number of keyboards that are QWERTY  US layout but have the
additional key common to European keyboards. We use this extra key as
a  composition key (essentially a dead key) to type additional
characters.

6) Add additional characters to AltGr and
Shift-AltGr key sequences.

The current draft for the keyboard
layouts uses a mix of  1), 2) and 6)

Probably one other
comment. It is important to be sensitive to potential users perceptions
about their languages. I remember having discussions with a few people
regarding a layout I was working on for Igbo. The people I was consulting
with felt that the letters of the alphabet should be accessible form the
basic (1st/2nd) level of the keyboard. the sub-dotted vowels and
n-dot_above are distinct letters of the Igbo alphabet and should be
treated differently to other characters with diacritics.

That
doesn't mean they need to be single precomposed characters, since each key
could easily output more than one character (including base character and
combining diacritic).

Just that there is a possibility of the
success of the layouts being determined based on how accurately users feel
that the keyboard layout supports and matches the perception of their
language and alphabet.

Long ago I decided there is no such
thing as the ideal layout. The usability and ergonomic factors of a
keyboard layout design can be optimised within the constraints of the
design parameters.

But a users perception of the keyboard is
just as an important factor in the layout design's success.

Just my two cents worth.

Andrew

On Mon, June 30,
2008 9:35 am, Don Osborn wrote:
> Hi Andrew, One problem we run up
against in talking about various advanced
> applications is the
issue of corpora. There is a need to find ways to (1)
> more
effectively digitize existing text, and (2) generate new text. On the
> former (1), I would really like to see a project to (a) assure
that
> extended
> Latin texts already scanned for projects
like Google books are OCR'd
> properly when extended Latin and
diacritics are involved (I've written
> that
> particular
project about that already), and (b) a new/additional focused
>
effort be undertaken to digitize all extant texts in under-resourced
> languages. On the latter (2) , Mark Liberman and colleagues at
the
> Linguistic Data Consortium (University of Pennsylvania) have
an
> interesting
> project concept for involving school
students transcribing oral histories
> that then could become part
of local heritage resources as well as
> developing the corpora
for the languages (makes me wonder if OLPC and
> similar projects
could be involved in a pilot effort along these lines).
> 
> 
> 
> That said, and returning to the topic of
analyzing keyboards: I would hope
> that even a relatively small
amount of text could in the meantime give us
> an
> idea
how efficient alternative keyboard layouts are. We can sort of give
> an
> educated guess about what might be more advantageous
in one way or another
> of particular key arrangements, but until
we can begin to collect and
> statistically analyze basic data on
keystokes, etc. it is just estimates.
> With small texts that are
probably not "representative samplings" (if such
> a
> thing were possible in language), there is a risk that a particular
text
> could give a misleading result. But at this stage in
discussion we may be
> just talking about beginning to get some
better ideas about the efficiency
> of alternative layouts.
> 
> 
> 
> Don
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>
From:
a12n-collaboration-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
[mailto:a12n-collaboration-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andrew
> Cunningham
> Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 8:23 AM
>
To: Tunde Adegbola
> Cc: keyboards@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'A12n tech
support'; Don Osborn; 'Indigenous
> Languages and Technology'
> Subject: [A12n-Collab] Re: [PALNet-general] Utilities for
analyzing
> keyboards?
> 
> 
> 
>
Don,
> 
> your second tool would necessitate having a
large corpus in each language
> to
> use for the
analysis.
> 
> as a quick experiment, i thought I'd look
at some character frequencies in
> a
> single text, just
an experiment, since a single text couldn't be
> considered
> adequate for a proper analysis.
> 
> Since the
draft Yoruba keyboard layout uses combining diacritics for all
>
the
> diacritics, I took the Yoruba translation of the UDHR. Then
normalised the
> text using NFD. I then ran it through a script to
count the occurrence of
> each character.
> 
> Of
the four most frequent characters, three were the combining diacritics:
> acute, grave and dot-below. Although a single text is inconclusive,
it is
> suggestive that for Yoruba the combining diacritics need
to be typed
> frequently and should be in positions allowing them
to be typed easily and
> quickly.
> 
> And yes, i
converted the vertical line below to a dot below before running
>
the test on the UDHR translation.
> 
> Andrew
>
--
> Andrew Cunningham
> Research and Development
Coordinator
> Vicnet
> State Library of Victoria
>
Australia
> 
> andrewc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
>
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-- 
Andrew Cunningham
Research and
Development Coordinator
Vicnet
State Library of Victoria
Australia

andrewc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx