From: Erkki Kolehmainen (erkki.kolehmainen@kotus.fi)
Date: Wed Jul 05 2006 - 02:12:28 CDT
I personally find this layout very hard to comprehend. I believe that a
European, multilingual general purpose keyboard should be intuitively
recognizable and - consequently - easy to learn and use.
In the Finnish Kotoistus Initiative we have developed a new multilingual
keyboard layout based on the de facto keyboard that is currently in most
common use in Finland and Sweden. The evaluation version for the basic
mode has recently been made available for download by Microsoft. Its
expansion, the decomposed mode (also covered by the specs) is the result
of the discussion at the BOF on Design Principles for A Regional,
Multilingual Keyboard at IUC 29.
For comparison, our current web addresses are
http://kotoistus.fi/avoimet/fi_kbspec_en_luonnos06.pdf for the specs,
http://kotoistus.fi/suljetut/kbpropa2r.pdf for the layout, and
http://kotoistus.fi/avoimet/kbpcse.pdf for the mandatory compositions.
The approach that we have chosen could easily be adapted for use in
other primary language environments as well.
Sincerely,
Erkki I. Kolehmainen
Coordinator, Cultural Diversity Issues in ICT
Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (RILF)
+358 400 825 943
Karl Pentzlin wrote:
> Hello all,
> today I have released an international keyboard layout based on the
> German standard layout on www.europatastatur.de (all information in
> German).
> It is intended to be usable for practically all languages
> written using the Latin script (including e.g. Vietnamese, Yorùbá),
> including at least some transcription systems.
> The name "Europatastatur" (europe keyboard) is chosen as the main
> audience are Europeans who want to type in all official languages of
> the European Union.
>
> - Karl Pentzlin
>
>
>
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