[Localization] Please test the SCIM based Amharic keyboard layout

[tegegne tefera]

Hei Edward and Saymundu

There is some thing terribly wrong with the character mapping as it stands
on the db file. That is mapping the first letter (as it is known geez in
Amharic) to the lower case characters in Latin scripts. Mapping this way
almost doubles the amount of key strokes needed to type a word or a
sentence.
Please see http://keyboards.ethiopic.org/specification/
Most amharic keyboard maping systems in the market today (including keyman)
fallow the above specification.
Unfortunately there is no official standard in this regard in Ethiopia yet.
but the SERA mapping system which the above specification is based, is not
only supported by a well documented study on lingustic and ergonomic
principles, it has become also a defacto standard due to it's wide use in
almost all amharic software, especially thos that comply to UNICODE
charactor encoding.
Unfortunately the amharic keyboard mapping on SCIM M17N is done by some one
who have  littel familiarity with amharic language long time ago and should
have been replaced by now.
I am using the KMFL http://kmfl.sourceforge.net/ on SCIM for my amharic
needs in linux.

I belive this mistake has to be corrected as soon as possible before going
to any test.

thanks
tegegne


On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 8:03 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I forwarded this to an Ethiopian mailing list to ask for testers.
>
> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I just uploaded a M17N keyboard layout definition for Amharic, which
> > should address http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8494
> > The m17n db file is at http://dev.laptop.org/~sayamindu/am-olpc.mim<http://dev.laptop.org/%7Esayamindu/am-olpc.mim>
> >
> > It would be awesome if someone who knows Amharic can test this out.
> > If you are a SCIM-m17n user, please copy this file to /usr/share/m17n
> > and select the appropriate method from your scim input method list.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Sayamindu
> > --
> > Sayamindu Dasgupta
> > [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
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> >
>
>
>
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