Conlang Keyboards (was: Re: CONLANG Digest - 1 Nov 2000)

On Fri, 3 Nov 2000 18:35:35 -0500 Robert Hailman <robert@...>
writes:
> In Ajuk, the keyboard would be somewhat similar to our own - you
> just do
> away with "q", "w", "y", "x", & "c", and probably switch the places
> of r
> & i, or something like that. For foreign compliance, though, those 5
> letters would probably be off to the sides, typed by the pinky.
> Also, I might even consider having an "ij" key.
> --
> Robert
-

A Rokbeigalmki keyboard would look completely different, since it doesn't
use the Latin alphabet.  In my fonts that i've made for it, the basic
letters usually correspond to the latin equivalents, with the
fricativized on Shift+(that letter), so D is /d/ and SHIFT-D is /D/ ;
there are some anomalies, such as N /n/ and SHIFT-N /n"/ (uvular nasal).
/ts/ and /tS/ appear on the X key, and most of the vowels are arranged in
similar-sounding pairs, for instance /a/ and /&/ on A, /Oj/ and /aj/ on
the "[" key.  And then of course there's Q (/e@/) and V (/U/), which
somewhat defy logic.

A Judean-Romance keyboard would have a key (like the apostraphe >> acute
on US-International keyboard layout) that places macrons on vowels, and
another key that places cedillas on consonants.  Or it could just be
ALTGR-E for {e-macron) and ALTGR-B for {b-cedilla}, etc., which is
probably simpler.  Although i still haven't decided how i'm planning on
spelling Hebrew/Greek/Aramaic/etc.-loanwords that defy the orthographic
and phonological systems of the language and it's writing - when {S} is
/S/ and {T-cedilla} is the only way to spell [s] (an allophone of /t/),
how do you spell the sound /s/?


-Stephen (Steg)
 "yam shel ahava / haya li bishvilkha..."