At 17:55 +0000 2005-08-30, suzmccarth wrote:

>Anyway it all breaks down to whether someone can use a roman
>orthography to input a syllabic writing system without first
>consciously learning alphabetic literacy. Porbably some can and
>some can't. What do you think?

"Some can't" is nonsense, except for dyslexics. Human beings can
learn all sorts of things. It isn't rocket science to teach people
that you press the

The Ethiopic "standard" keyboard is "alphabetic". Deadkeys where the
first key is a consonant followed by a vowel.

So much for the unfairness of alphabetic input for syllabic scripts.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com