Doug, Thanks for the attention and no problem about the remarks re who's aware of what. It's legitimate to wonder in either direction since there are such problems with information flows in Africa and among those elsewhere working with/for people there. My earliest lesson in this was as a Peace Corps volunteer working with an animal traction project (plowing with oxen, for those not up with the technology) in Togo a quarter century ago. Togo is a very small country - and a nice one too - that you can drive across in about an hour where the roads permit and drive the length of in an easy day - but there were apparently 5 animal traction projects there with little mutual contact or communication and at least one major unnecessary duplication of efforts (regarding carts) between the two largest projects.
In this case of Yoruba keyboards, happily, we are aware of the efforts of Tunde and ALT-I, but those have not been brought into public discussion as much as they might be (as far as I'm aware). Their effort was given an award by IICD and featured in a report in i-Connect Africa (July 2003 - http://www.uneca.org/aisi/IConnectAfrica/v1n5.htm ) which was also posted to A12n-forum at http://lists.kabissa.org/lists/archives/public/a12n-forum/msg00024.html . And I am sure that Tunde and ALT-I are aware of other efforts such as those brought together on the A12n keyboard projects page - http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/Projects/ - notably by Andrew Cunningham (I should mention that these are independent efforts listed on these pages, undertaken many of them with discussion on A12n-collaboration or offline). Yoruba keyboard efforts also include a project called Af�r� at the University of Ibadan that I haven't heard much about lately, and several Yoruba or pan-Nigerian keyboard efforts including a couple discussed more on the A12n-forum - NITDA and ABD Yoruba - and another commercial effort called Konyin. The Yoruba language & ICT message board at http://www.quicktopic.com/15/H/KKgbRqJUAR8 has more (Tunde himself has posted there, and he and Alt-I have been mentioned more than once). In fact there's quite a bit happening with Yoruba - more perhaps than one could expect Marc Lacey track down and report on (though the misinformation that Yoruba is a language of Niger and Cameroon is unfortunate; it is spoken in Benin and into part of Togo as Ana/Ife). Add to that some efforts such as those for Igbo (keyboards and also a Linux localization effortl there hasn't yet been as much activity for Nigeria's other "decamillionaire" language, Hausa), and the level of activity in Nigeria starts to get impressive ... and the need for discussion of standards becomes ever more urgent. One could say much more (e.g., re the unicode training issue), but I'll let it rest there for now. I would like to take the opportunity to make a quick general comment about Lacey's article. First, I think it's great that the issue of African languages and ICT is getting this kind of attention. When I started really devoting attention to this area in late 1999 and the concept of Bisharat was taking shape (I personally came to this with other experience having worked a decade earlier on a Fulfulde lexicon in dBaseIII and WP51), it was only a dream then that an influential Northern newspaper like the NYT would give African language computing such space. All the best. Don Osborn Bisharat.net Quoting Doug Ewell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I babbled incoherently: > > > I'll bet the folks at Bisharat and elsewhere would be surprised at > > the efforts that have been made to create keyboards for Yoruba. > > Should have been more like: > > "I'll bet Mr. Adegbola would be surprised at the efforts that have been > made by the folks at Bisharat and elsewhere to create keyboards for > Yoruba." > > -Doug Ewell > Fullerton, California > http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/ > > > >
