--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Marco Cimarosti <marco.cimarosti@...>
wrote:

> suzmccarth wrote:
> > > What I think is missing from this list is an ordinary Tamil
> > keyboard such as
> > > you can find a description of at

> > > http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/keyboards.aspx

Now I find that I have indeed been using the keyboard described in
this link and I did think that it was an ordinary Tamil keyboard.
Now I find out that it is the India Standard keyboard. It equally
well represents all the scripts of India. Comment on this if you
like.

Problems with this keyboard.

According to Tamil chat groups, it is not in use in any Tamil
community so my students have never seen it.

Many of the phonemes are found only in the shifted state, which is
entirely unexpected in Tamil with 12 vowels and 18 consonanats.

It does not in any way resemble any of the 3 keyboards which have
been in use in the Tamil community; Tamilnet99, Romanized and
Typewriter layout.

None of my students and their parents have ever seen opentype font
before.

The students demonstrate that they write with pen and paper from
left to write in order of visual sequence. They have entrenched
expectations that they should keyboard in this way.

My students have great difficulty replacing their knowledge of the
visual shape with an unseen sequence of segmented phonemes. This
ability to sequence phonemes is a learned, acquired skill in any
language.

When I demonstrate opentype font they are hopping around saying no,
no, no. That is not right - oh,just a minute what is that? Maybe,
but you do it, please.

The transliteration at least supplies immediate visual reinforcement
and feed back.

Suzanne McCarthy

this is indeed

> > the Tamil keyboard that I have always used in the classroom

since I

> > transferred to WIndows XP. Does it have another designation
> > besides 'ordinary'? It is indeed the keyboard I referred to in

my

> > first post - I don't know why everyone is so doubting.
>
> It is the Microsoft extension to the Indian standard keyboard

layout

> referred to as "Inscript" (acronym for "INdian SCRIPTs"):
>
> http://tdil.mit.gov.in/keyoverlay.htm
>

http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/InputMethod/indiclayout
.html

>
> The Microsoft extensions basically consists in filling in with

duplicates

> the keys which were left blank in the standard layout. (How

clever, eh? :-)

>
> The Inscript standard was issued by the government of India, in

close

> connection with ISCII, the Indian standard character set. The

latter was

> also the base for Unicode's Indic blocks.
>
> > I was a little confused about why I should view the keyboard on

the

> > internet since the on-screen keyboard in the accessibility

options

> > in WinXP is functional in any installed language. [...]
>
> Members of this forum don't know which members run which operating

systems:

> a picture on the Internet is something that all computer would

display the

> same way.
>
> _ Marco