On Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:49:29 -0400 Ed Trager <[email protected]> wrote:
Please note that there are some encoding questions mixed in with observations on the application. (Observation 3 from before) > Key Curry however needs to implement a generic solution across all > scripts for displaying combining marks in isolation, and thus using > DOTTED CIRCLE U+25CC is presumably a better choice than using, say, an > "x". Do you also see the "double dotted circle" problem with, say, an > Arabic keyboard's diacrtical marks? No, I see just one circle. However, the Arabic non-spacing marks appear above right and below right rather than above and below. (Observation 4 from before) > If you already have a Thai Ketmanee keyboard via X, > then you don't need Key Curry, do you? I thought the design aim was to use the scan codes, so if the Key Curry and Kesmanee layout are the same (and the Thai Industrial Standard has changed), I should get the same character for a key press. It worked fine until the browser couldn't work which key produced '/'! I think earlier discussion had already established that there was a widespread browser problem. > --- Unless of course you don't > like the Ketmanee layout -- then you might like to try the new "Easy > Thai" phonetic/mnemonic layout that I just added this past weekend. Thinking of preferences, you haven't forgotten Pattachote, the Thai equivalent of Dvorak, have you? Neither is in the current menu. Having made an effort to learn it well enough not to need a keyboard labelled in Thai, I naturally use Ketmanee as the basis of my own Lanna keyboard layouts. > > 6. Having a way of viewing the 2-key keymaps would be useful. > That's what the "Map" tab does. Is that not sufficient? It's cumbersome to use, and relies on users resorting to reading the instructions. Even pictures of a keyboard layout have their problems. I find it more useful to have a logically sorted map from character to what appears on the keyboard, as in my clunkier javascript Thai keyboard at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordingham/thai/entry_new.htm . > > 7. So far as I am aware, what appear to be U+0E4F THAI > > CHARACTER > > FONGMAN and U+0E5B THAI CHARACTER KHOMUT > > serving as punctuation in a Lanna text have not been declared > > to be glyph variants of U+1AA4 TAI THAM SIGN HOY and > > U+1AAC TAI THAM SIGN HANG. <snip> > Do you have some evidence you can point out to me showing that THAI > FONGMAN and THAI KHOMUT (or something looking a lot like those > symbols) are used in Lanna texts? Perhaps there is a manuscript on > the http://www.laomanuscripts.net > digital library that shows such usage? I haven't looked through old texts for them. The script was still in significant use in Northern Thailand in the 1960s, so I shouldn't have been startled to find the brand name 'Electone' in the Lanna script in the MFL dictionary of Northern Thai. Pages 130-131 of 'Tamra Rian Nangsue Phasa Lanna Thai' by Kh(r)u Siniam S(a)wat, dated 1992 on the flysheet, have been uploaded to http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordingham/lanna/tamra130a.png . (I'm afraid they weigh in at 9 Mbytes - but the quality of the copy is good.) Each of the four paragraphs start with a fongman, drawn as two roughly concentric circles. The terminal punctuation of paragraphs one, three and four ends in what is either khomut or a hitherto unidentified symbol. None of these khomut-like symbols rise to the elaboration of khomut or U+1AAC TAI THAM SIGN HANG as depicted in TUS. There are some possible coding issues with commas and full stops, which I had previously overlooked. The commas (most prominent at the bottom of p130) hang from the Lanna baseline, from which Lanna consonants hang. (Do I need to publish an illustration of how Lanna consonants should be written on ruled paper? It's shown in most text books. Strangers to the script need only recall the Devanagari base line as described in the definition of the OpenType positioning tables.) However, in sentences starting in the Thai script, commas between Lanna script words hang from the Thai baseline, which is the same as the European baseline. (The continuous text, as opposed to tables, seems to have been written using feint lines that have generally not been reproduced, and the commas - and full stops - have been hung from those lines, whether the Lanna script words hang from them as usual or sit on them so that the bodies of the consonants line up with the Thai consonants.) We might suggest that the positioning was a font change between a Lanna script font and a Thai or Latin script font, but aren't there standards that say that fonts should support ASCII? (Thai Khuen commas that I've seen hang from the European baseline). Do we have yet another punctuation mark here? Should we encode commas hanging from the Lanna baseline as U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK? U+2019 has general = category Pi, which means initial quotation mark, or opening or closing punctuation. There also appear to be some full stops on the Lanna baseline - the abbreviation functions seems the most plausible interpretation. (The primary non-numeric use of the full stop in Thai is as an abbreviation mark.) How should they be encoded? We can't rely on context, as when profane (HORA) Lanna numbers have been written on the ruled line, a following full stop still appears on the line. Observation 9 (new): I believe that in Thailand, grave is commonly use to switch between US and Thai keyboard layouts. Won't this interfere with the use of grave in the 2 to 1 sequences for the Tai Tham consonants? For that very reason, I chose '!' as a sort of dead key to access extra keyboards in my Keyman for Linux (KMFL) keyboard mapping for this script. (I use AltGr in the Windows (MSKLC - not the latest technology) and X mappings, but then I lose some or all of the 'ligatures' that some list as Lanna consonants - see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordingham/lanna/bad_alph.gif for instance - and which I have in my KMFL keyboard. Make the implications of that chart into Observation 10 if you think you should handle potential named sequences.) Observation 11 (new): It took me a long time to twig what you meant by the pause/play button. I wasn't expecting one on the input window. Richard.
