How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post general font related questions (e.g. how to install, convert and use fonts) and requests (looking for fonts, designers etc.) here.
Post Reply
Roshan
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Jun 27, 2015 11:14 am

How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Roshan »

My Language name is Maithili & typing script is Tirhuta. Unicode Organisation has already accepted Tirhuta Script in their 7th version. but yet not available in the typing and also not available in Unicdoe font. Please guide me to crate Tirhuta Keyboard layout for typing & Tirhuta Script for font.
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

This is not a question about FontCreator, so I have moved it to the General Font Discussion forum.

Take a look at the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator

I have no experience of creating keyboards for Tirhuta fonts, but I assume that it can be done.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Roshan
Posts: 23
Joined: Sat Jun 27, 2015 11:14 am

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Roshan »

Please help me
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

It is beyond the scope of FontCreator support to teach you how to create keyboard layouts. You will have to read the help file of the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator:
Assigning Keystrokes
With a number of diverse keyboard authoring tools available, the user may have any number of expectations with regards to assigning a specific key on a keyboard. MSKLC provides a number of different key assignment methods to meet these expectations:

Clicking on a key with the mouse to bring up the keystroke edit dialog
Typing the key twice (once to set focus on the key, once to bring up the keystroke edit dialog)
Dragging text from another application (such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Windows Character Map) and dropping it onto a key.
When entering code points in any of the keystroke editing or dead key dialogs, you can enter either the actual characters or the Unicode code points separated by spaces, in U+[##]#### format (the optional digits are for code points off of the Basic Multilingual Plane, greater than U+FFFF).
The Tirhuta block is 11480..114DF and the codepoints are outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by William »

The code chart is available as follows.

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U11480.pdf

William Overington

26 September 2015
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by William »

I sent a request for help to the Unicode mailing list.

http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicod ... /0155.html

Any replies to that mailing list may be monitored from the archive of the mailing list.

For the current month the archive may be monitored from the following web page.

http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicod ... index.html

Someone has sent me an email reply.
Quote of the email reply: the person wrote:
For a Mac it is very easy to make custom layouts with

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

(But you do need a font for it to be of any use)
I hope that this helps.

William
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by William »

I have found the following document that contains a section about Tirhuta.

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode8.0.0/ch15.pdf

Readers may well find that the following is useful as near the start there is a description of features common to many of the languages of India.

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode8.0.0/ch12.pdf

These documents and various others are linked from the following web page.

http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode8.0.0/

William Overington

28 September 2015
Marcel
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2015 3:54 pm

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Marcel »

Hi Roshan, Hi William, Hi everyone!

I'm a newcomer who's joined up right now, following William's invitation he posted on the Unicode List and I found about an hour before.

Whatever script you are trying to implement, the first thing to do is to point your browser to the Tavultesoft Keyman home page.
One thousand layouts are readily available. And one user software version is for free (for up to two simultaneous layouts supported):
http://keyman.com/

Unfortunately, two searches on the keyboard search page showed there isn't already a ready-to-use solution:
http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/downl ... submit.y=0
http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/downl ... submit.y=0

The next step is to try Keyman Developer 9.0, equally for free now in beta release, with a perpetual license key:
http://www.tavultesoft.com/beta/

I recommend highly this software especially for Tirhuta (Maithili), which on Windows needs two code units per character because Windows turns in UTF-16, and Tirhuta is the Supplemental Multilingual Planes (SMP) of Unicode. Keyman uses a powerful language and allows for many desirable features that are hard if not impossible to realize in a Windows keyboard driver (the place where you can map characters to a standard set of key combinations).

The already mentioned Micrososoft Keyboard Layout Creator allows for basic layouts on four levels without the Numpad and without remapping of modifier keys, without chained dead keys, without support for SMP in dead keys, bit with support of SMP on keystrokes and with support of SCCaps (a pair of other characters in the Base and Shift shift states of each key while CapsLock is on).

The graphic UI of MSKLC supposes that you have already a font installed. So the first thing to do actually is to design a font for Tirhuta. You may wish to use any font creation software, namedly Font Creator, which is discussed here and I've tried IRRW. I know that font design is a hard job, so don't expect to get it done within a little time. It's all about learning a lot of technical documentation and having a thorough sense for aesthetics.

Unfortunately I've no knowledge of Tirhuta, nor of Indic languages on the whole, so that I must confess being unable to figure out how Tirhuta script must be laid out on a keyboard. I'm confident that the job will be done. What I can contribute, is about the method (or one method) of obtaining eight shift states instead of four, and for inclusion of the numpad which can be mapped equally on all eight shift states. Further I've been given the opportunity of gathering information by experiences and thanks to the Unicode Mailing List Subscribers about support of code units sequences by keyboard drivers. The technical maximum number is sixteen code units per keystroke, except on Shift+AltGr shift state, where an unexplained limitation brings up an unexpected behaviour of the OS when more than four valid code units are in the ligature table entry. And I recommend to edit the C sources tables in spreadsheets, and there is a command script to run the MSKLC compilers on them available on the following web page where I got it:
http://accentuez.mon.nom.free.fr/Clavie ... lavier.php

The Download link is:
http://accentuez.mon.nom.free.fr/Clavie ... lavier.zip

To get the first C sources, a working method is to input the maximum through the graphic interface of MSKLC, then run KbdUTool on the .klc file using the -u and -s commands in the command prompt. Once finished editing, for the command script to work, place all into the MSKLC package folder that is created with the .klc file, and run compile.bat there. The drivers in the four folders are replaced with the new ones. Just keep this DLLs.

If you have other questions, you are welcome to keep posting in this thread, and I'll try to answer if I can (otherwise I'll tell you that I can't). Please be sometimes patient, as I do not stay on line.

Best wishes,

Marcel
Richard W
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:41 pm

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Richard W »

I think Bhikkhu Pesala has already answered the question of how to create a keyboard for Windows. I would imagine the same keyboard layout as for Bengali would be chosen, but different users will have different desires. On the Linux side, Keyman for Linux (e.g. with ibus) (KMfL) also works with supplementary planes.

I trust you are aware of Word's alt-X command that toggles between characters and hexadecimal character codes.

Most modern tools will work with the Tirhuta script to some degree. If you use the Emacs editor, you might have to contribute a layout engine for the Tirhuta script to m17n if working off Windows, and if working on Windows you might need to create an Emacs keyboard definition.

Now, creating a font is more complicated. The question then, is what are you starting with? Do you have glyphs? Are you converting an existing font to Unicode? The good news is that FontCreator supports the supplementary planes - I don't know if there is real problem as to what version of Unicode your copy supports.

Richard.
Bhikkhu Pesala
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 9873
Joined: Tue Oct 29, 2002 5:28 am
Location: Seven Kings, London UK
Contact:

Re: How to create Tirhuta (Maithili) Keyboard layout

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Richard W wrote:I think Bhikkhu Pesala has already answered the question of how to create a keyboard for Windows.
I don't think I answered the question at all well as I have no previous experience of this script. Marcel's answer was much more comprehensive.

Before we overload Roshan with any more information, I suggest waiting for a response to see what he understood so far.

I have moved the advanced discussion to this thread:

Creating a Tirhuta Keyboard

Please do not post again in this thread unless Roshan replies.
My FontsReviews: MainTypeFont CreatorHelpFC15 + MT12.0 @ Win 10 64-bit build 19045.2486
Post Reply