Re: Typologoy vs. input methods (was: Cathy Wissink of Microsoft (!

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Doug Ewell" <dewell@...> wrote:

> Suzanne McCarthy <suzmccarth at yahoo dot com> wrote:
>
> >> Everyone, especially the computer guys, keeps telling you that
> >> script typology has nothing whatsoever to do with input methods.
> >
> > Actually the 'computer guys' kept telling me that the unicode

layer

> > and the editing layer are different. The codepoints and the

input

> > and display are different. Particularly Marco, on June 3, (thank
> > you, and to many others on and off the list) explained that Indic
> > input has "a sort of 'syllabic editing' functionally very

similar to

> > a Chinese input method." So that the abugida model has been used
> > for assigning codepoints and the syllabic model for input method.
>
> Exactly. Which means the typology of the script (Tamil in this

case, an

> abugida) has nothing to do with its input method (syllabic).
>
> > At the time I could not see this display because Office 2000
> > (western edition) doesn't have a USP10.ddl file. It wasn't until
> > someone finally contacted me off the list and explained these

files

> > that I 'got it'. Uniscribe mediates between the Unicode layer,

the

> > assigned codes, and the input and display. Now I can go back and
> > reread what the 'computer guys' said and understand it. I just
> > sometimes wonder why the 'computer guys' didn't tell me about the
> > USP10 on day 2 instead of day 40. I guess because this was

supposed

> > to be 'behind the scenes' - oh well.
>
> Uniscribe is a display engine. It takes the Unicode code points

and the

> font and tries to render everything the best it can. It has

nothing to

> do with keyboard input or other input; that's how you get the code
> points INTO the system.
>
> If the computer guys didn't tell you about Uniscribe right away,

it's

> probably because you were asking questions about what type of

script

> Tamil is and what sort of input method is appropriate for it (two
> separate issues; see above). If you had been talking about

display, on

> the other hand, someone probably would have mentioned display

engines.

Actually what I said was that the children can intitively keyboard
Chinese Pinyin and Korean without training but Tamil is a nightmare.
Without Uniscribe input and display are all bad. I asked about
this difference? How did Korean end up with something intuitive
and Tamil didn't. How could anyone talk about Uniscribe as being
invisible? But I fully understand now how this confusion happened.
Not only was the display bad but the input is also a problem. So
there are so many different problems in keyboarding to Tamil that it
is hard to disentangle them.

>
> > The remaining problem is that I don't know why Cathy Wissink of
> > Microsoft was so adamant in saying that Indic languages don't

need

> > an IME. The IME's are now being developed by Bhashaindia so I

guess

> > someone was convinced of the necessity. Since input in order of
> > visual sequence is not available for Unicode fonts at this time

no

> > input method has become popularly accepted other than
> > transliteration. This was told to me by a 'computer guy'. This is
> > really the remaining problem. Can the syllabic IME, version one,

now

> > distributed be developed into a useful input method or not. What
> > would an appropriate input method for Tamil be?
>
> "Visual sequence" in this case means typing character B before

character

> A, because B appears to the left of A, even though A occurs

logically

> before B in the spelling of the word.
>
> Transliteration, of course, is about taking text in one writing

system

> (in this case Tamil) and rendering it in another (in this case

Latin).

>
> Do you see how this has nothing at all to do with whether Tamil is

an

> abugida or an alphabet or a syllabary or logographic or whatever?

Actually I have used all the different input systems for Tamil
legacy fonts and Unicode fonts and have tried them out on native
speakers. Because Tamil speakers don't like to input in order of
phonetic sequence and the syllabic IME doesn't actually work yet,
they have switched en masse to transliteration or at least a
romanized keyboard but similar effect in this case. The other
common option is to keyboard in the legacy font and use code
conversion.

There is a definite disjunct between what the coding allows, and
what Uniscribe has so far enabled in terms of rendering, i.e. input
order, and how the Tamil wish to input, so they have switched to
transliteration. I am not saying this is negative - it looks a
little like inputting Pinyin. But to say Tamil doesn't need an IME
is like saying bats can lay eggs if they want to.

The problem is not that I don't know what visual sequence, uniscribe
and tranliteration are - the problem is that I have observed a
cluster of difficulties with Tamil that are all intertwined on a
human level. I am living this as a real life situation - not an
academic problem. I am trying to disentangle the levels. For the
most part when people respond to my posts, and I take this as a
kindness, it furthers my ability to identlfy the level(s) where the
problem(s) exists.

Suzanne

> -Doug Ewell
> Fullerton, California
> http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/