Getting screen shots of my Deseret keyboard layout is a less than
trivial task, so I'll try to describe it word-wise.
Two main points: I started with QWERTY and kept key mappings the
same as much as possible. Of course, since Deseret has 38 letters I
had to do some doubling up. The main way I did this was to define
"q" as a dead-key. This way I didn't have to result to using the
option (alternate) key to get additional forms.
The main use of the dead key is to use the long vowels instead of the
short ones. That way I could map the six Deseret vowels to their
Latin equivalents, hijacking the [-key for the sixth vowel.
The keyboard I came up with is therefore:
First row:
[dead key] [wu] [short e] [er] [tee] [yee] [short o] [short i] [short
ah] [pee] [short oo]
Second row:
[short a] [es] [dee] [ef] [gay] [h] [jee] [kay] [el]
Third row:
[zee] [esh] [chee] [vee] [bee] [en] [em]
That gives us twenty-six of the thirty-eight letters. The other
twelve are done by pressing the dead key first:
[wu] -> [ow]
[short e] -> [long e]
[tee] -> [eth]
[yee] -> [ay]
[short o] -> [long oo]
[short i] -> [long i]
[short ah] -> [long o]
[short oo] -> [long ah]
[short a] -> [long a]
[dee] -> [thee]
[esh] -> [zhee]
[en] -> [eng]
(That is, pressing the two-key sequence <Q+W> gives [ow] instead of [wu].)
Pressing Caps Lock switches to a standard QWERTY keyboard for Latin.
On the whole, this is a vaguely satisfactory way to type. It's kind
of annoying to have to type two keys for common things like "thee"
and the long vowels, but it seems OK otherwise.
There's also Brion Zion's keyboard for Windows, implicit in the way
he set up his Deseret Alphabet font. Unfortunately, his Web site has
vanished in the great digital void and I no longer have a copy of his
font.
--John H. Jenkins jenkins@apple.com jenkins@mac.com http://homepage.mac.com/jenkins/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Oct 03 2001 - 10:27:35 EDT