--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:

> At 20:22 +0000 2005-10-01, suzmccarth wrote:
>
> >The Tamil picker, on the other hand, is not only for farangs. I am
> >working with a Tamil teenager right now, who is starting a blog in
> >Tamil. When I ask if she would like to learn how to *keyboard* Tamil
> >she looks at me like I must be some crazy lady - but with the

syllabic

> >picker she is starting to compose easily, not distracted by keyboard
> >issues, but always thinking about what she wants to write.
>
> I bet you ten euros that Tamils working in production offices
> typesetting Tamil publications use keyboards.

Your euros are safe Michael. Kuralsoft

http://kstarsoft.com/

provides phonetic(qwerty-based transliteration) Tamil99, Old and New
Typewriter keyboards. So Tamil has been reworked back to the original
glyph-based Typewriter style input.

However, even then it needs shift for some glyphs. Of course, trained
office workers in any country use keyboards, obviously, and
transliteration, for many.

But untrained individuals can keyboard English by looking at the keys
with absolultely no training once they know the capital letters, which
children in kindergarten learn first anyway.

Other scripts should have something available for the untrained. Why
such an elitist attitude? Do you think that there is something sacred
about the alphabet, the keyboard, the touch typist, etc, etc? that
only we, the oligoi, should alone have access to the internet.

Suzanne