Mapping more than just upper & lower English charectors

[V.Ramasami]

Mapping more than say 130 glyphs to key board.

How to do it? Use CTRL & ALT keys?

Creating composites & diacriticals, as per tutorial by Davecrosby. But it does not go beyond!!

Pl. give a hands down solution.
************************************************8
In continuation..... Let me make myself clear!!

I've created a Tamil font file. Tamil requires around 130 simple glyphs. Including spl. charecters, it will be 150. I use FCP; WIN98:

There are two parts to the question:

ONE:
In windows platform, how to map these (shall we say high order?) glyphs to keyboard charectors, after the basic Latin segment? Which other segment is required to be used for mapping the rest of the glyphs?

TWO:
After having mapped & saved & installed the .ttf file, it is to be used for writting, say, an essay in Tamil, using the Notepad/ richtext. In notepad, after selecting my font, how to get these highorder (say the 120th) glyphs written in the file? Am I required to press CTRL / ALT keys along with the keyboard charectors?

Have I made myself clear? Since I'm a novice, I couldn't follow anything in the reply of Dickpape!!
******************************************************
Thank you Bikku Pesala. Your advice is well taken.

More info for you: Drivers are not available with all; nor do we go by Keyboard standards or Unicode. All are in the initial stages and very cumbersime. The educated prefer the phonetic keyboard which is not in the interest of the language.

So I'll follow the first easy approach.

One more info from you is required:
a)
Which segment to be used to map a`; b` etc. FCP has given a lot of segments, the first being Basic Latin, which has been used for frequently used ones.
b)
In Notepad, is it not possible to press either ALT or CTL (instead of both) to type these infrequent ones?

Thanks!!

[Dick Pape]

I hope this is your question!

There are many defined keyboard entries using the Alt key plus 3 or 4 digits. Display depends upon the font &/or application being used. The key strokes would be the same, but the character shown would depend upon the (Latin) mapping.

I have a list of 322. Here is a sample of some (A , B, C).

The compressed format is alt+ nnnn, character, postscript name, decimal Unicode number, Unicode name. Sometimes there are two numbers which work. For instance, alt+0225 gives á AND alt+160 gives á. An entry with "-" can be entered directly from the keyboard.

Knowing how this sometimes is, I "guarantee" they work for me.

-alt+0065, A, A, 65, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A
-alt+0097, a, a, 97, LATIN SMALL LETTER A
alt+0193, Á, Aacute, 193, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
alt+0225, á, 160 aacute, 225, LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
alt+0194, Â, Acircumflex, 194, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX
alt+0226, â, acircumflex, 226, LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX
alt+0180, ´ acute, 180, ACUTE ACCENT; SPACING ACUTE
alt+0152, ˜, acutedbl; hungarumlaut, 733, DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT
alt+0196, Ä, 142 Adieresis, 196, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS
alt+0228 ä adieresis 228 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS
alt+0198 Æ 146 AE 198 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AE
alt+0230 æ 145 ae 230 LATIN SMALL LETTER AE; LATIN SMALL LIGATURE AE
alt+0192 À Agrave 192 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE
alt+0224 à agrave 224 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH GRAVE
alt+ 224 α alpha 945 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
-alt+0038 & ampersand 38 AMPERSAND
alt+ 247 ≈ approxequal 8776 ALMOST EQUAL TO
alt+ 247 ≈ approxorequal; approximatelyequal; congruent 8773 APPROXIMATELY EQUAL TO
alt+0197 Å 143 Aring 197 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE
alt+0229 å aring 229 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE
alt+ 29 ↔ arrowboth; a163; arrowlongboth 8596 LEFT RIGHT ARROW
alt+ 25 ↓ arrowdown 8595 DOWNWARDS ARROW
alt+ 27 ← arrowleft 8592 LEFTWARDS ARROW
alt+ 26 → arrowright; a161 8594 RIGHTWARDS ARROW
alt+ 24 ↑ arrowup 8593 UPWARDS ARROW
alt+ 18 ↕ arrowupdn; arrowlongbothv; a164 8597 UP DOWN ARROW
-alt+0094 ^ asciicircum 94 CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT
-alt+0126 ~ asciitilde; tilde- 126 TILDE
-alt+0042 * asterisk 42 ASTERISK
-alt+0064 @ at 64 COMMERCIAL AT
alt+0195 Ã Atilde 195 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE
alt+0227 ã atilde 227 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH TILDE
-alt+0066 B B 66 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B
-alt+0098 b b 98 LATIN SMALL LETTER B
-alt+0092 \ backslash 92 REVERSE SOLIDUS
-alt+0124 | bar; verticalbar 124 VERTICAL LINE
alt+ 225 ß beta 946 GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA
alt+ 219 █ block 9608 FULL BLOCK
-alt+0123 { braceleft 123 LEFT CURLY BRACKET
-alt+0125 } braceright 125 RIGHT CURLY BRACKET
-alt+0091 [ bracketleft 91 LEFT SQUARE BRACKET
-alt+0093 ] bracketright 93 RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET
alt+0166 ¦ brokenbar 166 BROKEN BAR
alt+0149 • 7 bullet 8226 BULLET
-alt+0067 C C 67 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C
-alt+0099 c c 99 LATIN SMALL LETTER C
alt+0136 ˆ caron; shinshindot 711 CARON
alt+0199 Ç Ccedilla 199 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA
alt+0231 ç ccedilla 231 LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA
alt+0184 ¸ cedilla 184 CEDILLA
alt+0162 ¢ 155 cent 162 CENT SIGN
alt+ 9 ○ (265) circle; whitecircle 9675 WHITE CIRCLE
alt+ 5 ♣ (261) club; clubsuitblack; a112 9827 BLACK CLUB SUIT
-alt+0058 : colon 58 COLON
-alt+0044 , comma 44 COMMA
alt+0169 © copyright 169 COPYRIGHT SIGN
alt+0164 ¤ currency 164 CURRENCY SIGN

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

This is a hard question for us English speaking users to answer as we have no knowledge of what systems are used in Tamil Nadu. This page that I found with Google will tell you something perhaps. Do you have a Tamil Language setting in your local version of Windows for example? The UK version doesn't have one - it only has keyboards for most European languages and Indonesian.

There are two ways that I know of to map non-roman (not ABC) fonts:

1. To the ANSI character set
2. To Unicode (A PDF chart of the Unicode mapping for Tamil)

Method 1 is basically cheating. You map common Tamil characters to ABC... xyz. Any less common characters are mapped to áéíóú etc., which are the upper range of ANSI characters. With the UK International keyboard, I can easily type áéíóú in any Windows application with Control+Alter+aeiou. This extends the range of usuable characters that can be mapped.

Method 2 is the proper way to do it, but Windows 98SE doesn't fully support Unicode. I don't know if you'll be able to find the keyboard drivers you need to use a Unicode mapped Tamil Font. You will have to contact other Tamil speakers to get info on what is available. Just searching Google for "Tamil Keyboard" may find what you need. There is an official Microsoft Tamil Keyboard, but I suspect that is only for Windows XP.

If you have to resort to method 1, it works, and may be easier. There will be a standard mapping such as that in Annexure 1 or Annexure 2 Then you map your fonts accordingly, load the appropriate keyboard driver, and away you go.

Method 3 is a hybrid of the two methods. Though you don't have a suitable Tamil keyboard driver, you can map your characters to Unicode points, and assign shortcut keys in Word to type the appropriate characters.

Dick Pape seemed to misread your initial question before you edited your post. In Wordpad, hold down the Alter key and type the numbers on the numeric keypad. This will type any of the extended characters he listed, e.g. Alter + 0166 will type ¦ You could type this way, and I've seen some Burmese typists using this method, but it is crazy. Modern wordprocessors can be mapped to type almost any character with a simple combination of keystrokes like Control A to type ā, Control Shift A to type Ā etc., a method I use for typing the Pāli language used by Buddhists.

[V.Ramasami]

A simple taylor made keyboard driver (37k zip) with ligature features, for using CNT+ALT keys, (very similar to UK International keyboard) for ALL Windows OS, is now available at:
http://sarovar.org/projects/keytrans/
for anyone to try!