Re: Vai keyboards --> RW's Thai input; tablet?

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Nicholas Bodley" <nbodley@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 19:20:57 -0400, suzmccarth <suzmccarth@...>
> wrote:

(This post is written in a Thai encoding, despite what the e-mail
header may say.)

> > How about Richard W's picker for Thai here - the same concept -
> > different look.
> > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordingham/thai/entry_new.htm
>
> I remember having a look. This time, I tried a bit, not knowing

anything

> about Thai (other than that I know it's Thai when I see it).

Innocently,

> for Thai numerals, tried the keypad (Num Lock on), and the whole image
> re-sized! That was not smart. Keypad [*] restored the size; that was

nice,

> because some other apps. do the same thing that way.

Sounds like an Opera feature - On IE and Firefox the keypad digits
just duplicate the man keyboard digits. It's a shame really, because
in the Windows interpretation of Kedmanee, they provide an easy way to
type things like 10.50ß.

> Also tried a few letters, and concluded that with what I have, it

ought to

> work. There didn't seem to be any gross bugs.
> Opera 8.02, 98 SE here. I use Metapad as a Notepad replacement;

didn't try

> that.

Let me know the little ones! I may able to fix them if they occur
under Windows XP.

> The keystrokes for changing encodings are a puzzle; maybe I need to

study

> a bit. Shifted 5 is a % sign on mine; for "%e", should one type

Shift+5,

> then let go and type an [e]?

On your keyboard, yes. Just type '%e' in the normal fashion for your
keyboard set-up. Clicking the radar buttons also works, but lose your
cursor position.

> In general, the % symbol seems somewhat puzzling.

I have a vague recollection of % being used as an escape character
being used in VAX/VMS phone; it also escapes to formatting directives
in C printf() formats. It dates from the days when I used the
'phonetic' encoding to print a mixture of Thai and English using
PostScript fonts. That meant I wanted a single source character for
each Thai character, though I did extend a program I already had for
converting ASCII text to PostScript. (I had to write my own Thai font
and make it legible. No kerning of tonemarks, let alone of vowels!)
I used %e and %f to switch fonts (to those for English and 'foreign'
respectively), and also used % to set the high bit for the Thai
letters I couldn't encode as single printable ASCII characters - most
of the cerebral/retroflex row and cho choe (= Indic <jh>).

> I also had a look at the source code; was a fine idea to change the

size

> to "much bigger" for the Thai letters. I've done enough programming to
> realize that what Richard has done is a *lot* of quite-painstaking,
> detailed work, and it's a beauty!

Thanks for the compliment.

> It surely looks like a labor of love; I do hope the "Thai community"

appreciates it.

Ambiguous expression - I believe the 'Thai community' that needs it is
mostly farangs who want to write a bit of Thai. If I start getting
Thai users I'll have to add instructions in Thai! I haven't planned
for the chore of supporting Dvorak keyboard users who want to use the
Thai pattachote keyboard!

Richard.