[avodonosov]

Similar to other commenters, I am curious to know what is the problem with african languages? Can't you just make a button for each character in the alphabet? (The readme mentions it is a phonetic-based input method, so I assume African languages use alphabets, not some logograms, right?)

What is common for African languages that allows solving the problem for all of them together in one software package? (How meaningful, for example, whould be a software package for Eurasian languages?)

I watched the video - https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim-keyboard/ - but don't understand. A latin keyboard is used, but it produces some other characters.

[ppseafield]

Ge'ez and its adaptations are abugidas, which means one symbol is a full syllable. For Amharic there are over 200 individual symbols. [0] That would be a big keyboard! It does seem that most in-use languages in Africa are alphabets or abjads, which could be adapted to keyboards. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez_script#Ge%CA%BDez_w...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_systems_of_Africa

[presentation]

Would these African abugidas be served well with a keyboard like the mobile 10-key Japanese swipe keyboards? [1] Japanese has much fewer sounds so it all fits in a pretty small package but it works so much better and faster than romaji in that context. Maybe it could be adapted with slightly more keys and complex swipe patterns, like up then right/left etc (it looks like for ge’ez at least, such patterns might actually be intuitive eyeballing the patterns in the characters, but someone native would know best).

[1] https://youtu.be/Q204SYyfEJY?si=KWe1sny93MeBScuT

[zhengyi13]

It'd be nice, but I don't think that model would be workable here.

Somewhat oversimplified, but the two Japanese syllabaries hiragana and katakana are around 50 distinct characters each, so that a core 3x4 board of "keys" responding to tap(-and-maybe-swipe (up|down|left|right)) will give you roughly the full set of each. Generally, tapping the key designates the consonant; swiping (or not) gives you the vowel. There are 5 vowels, and roughly 10 consonants. There's a couple of other symbols added on as modifiers for voicing, etc. Again, oversimplified, but that's roughly it.

(Side note, and I'm guessing here, but I suspect this model probably evolved from T9 texting)

From a brief inspection of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%CA%BDez_script, the Ge'ez syllabary/abugida (used e.g. for Amharic) needs 6-8 vowels across at least 26 consonants, and then some more combinations for labialization/velarization, and then some more for application in specific other languages.

Following the Japanese model, that'd be a pretty big grid :) Phonetic input seems a more workable model to me at least.

[avodonosov]

Thanks.

So probably the user on the video types in a phonetic approximation of the words using the latin alphabet, and the software translates it to the abugida symbols?

Seems plausable, especially because he types several latin characters to get one symbol.

Interesting to note that sometimes he also uses digits.

[teractiveodular]

The demo video appears to show typing in Fe'fe', which uses a Latin alphabet.

The library apparently also supports Amharic/Ge'ez, which does use an abugida, but I can't find any videos of this.