Re: Bopomofo keyboards in Taiwan

At 22:48 -0400 2005-08-30, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>People who have not learned an _alphabet_ cannot divide a syllable
>into anything smaller.

I'm always amazed at estimations about what people "cannot" do.
People can learn. That's how we survived the Ice Age.

>I don't know what "the Ethiopic 'standard' keyboard" may be,

It is not a formal Ethiopian National Standard specification (yet),
but it is the most common computer keyboard configuration available
on various platforms.

>but the Amharic typewriter keyboard that was made by Olympia is not "consonant
>followed by vowel," for the simple reason that the 182 basic Ge`ez
>shapes, not to mention the labiovelars and the extra Amharic diacritics,
>could only be fitted onto a standard typewriter by making lots of
>ingenious dissections of the characters.

Yes, those typewriter keyboards were ingenious, given the hardware
technology. To my knowledge, no software emulates that layout,
however.
--
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com