From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Feb 10 2004 - 13:27:07 EST
Here you'll find a tentative French-based Pan-Sahelian keyboard layout.
- in Excel format:
http://www.rodage.org/pub/French-Sahel.xls
- as a PDF snapshot:
http://www.rodage.org/pub/French-Sahel.pdf
The layout uses AltGr and AltGr+Shift maps for non-African characters and it
supports most of the European languages, with which Pan-Sahelian languages are
used. The layout is fully compatible with an existing French keyboard layout
(yes it has the Euro, and all French AltGr keys), to minimize the cost of
building such keyboards, which could be distributed as a low-cost plate of
plastic stickers to put on an existing French keyboard.
It uses an "Afr" deadkey which can be entered prior to the African characters
entered without the AltGr key. Some keyboards support a "Fn" key which could be
used as a modifier (working like a second AltGr key).
Two snapshots are displayed:
- one simplified to just display the important characters in the AltGr and Afr
maps. When a character has both a lowercase and uppercase version, only the
lowercase is displayed centered vertically. This enhances the
readability/usability of the keyboard (exactly like on classic keyboards where
lowercase unaccented letters are showing only the uppercase version aligned
vertically on the top).
- the second snapshot shows the complete assignments. Unused positions are shown
with a dark grey background.
Some African keys are shown on a redish background (in the Excel version) for
characters which must be composed in Unicode, and are still approximative and
possibly candidates for addition in the Unicode standard. These keys cause
problems for now, as it is not clear how these letters will be encoded in
Unicode: as a combining sequence? The most problematic characters are those
African letters with hooks.
I'd like suggestions about these missing characters (sometimes only the
lowercase letter is assigned not the uppercase one)...
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Feb 10 2004 - 14:17:29 EST