Solomon Atnafu - Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard (VEK)
Transcript of Solomon Atnafu - Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard (VEK)
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Andualem Workneh, Yonan Getachew,
Gedion TAMENE, Solomon Atnafu,emails:, [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected] , [email protected]
November 11, 2010
M4D 2010, Kampala, Uganda
This project is partially supported by UNECA
Addis Ababa University
The Virtual Ethiopic Keyboardfor Smart Phones
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Outline
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1. Introduction
2. The Challenges of Virtual Keyboard Design
for Ethiopic Character Set
3. System Layout Design
4. Implementation
5. Conclusions
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Ethiopia At the horn of Africa, about 1.1 sqkm,
A country of more than 80 million,
45% < 15 years
More than 75 languages,
The Official working Language
(Amharic, with Ethiopic script),
Use of other languages at regionalgovernment level,
Many initiatives of localization
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1. Introduction
The Ethiopic Character Set
Amharic is the working language of the federal government
of Ethiopia (a country with a population of more than 80
million) and is spoken and written as a first or second
language in many parts of the country. Among the other languages that use Ethiopic script are
Tigrigna, Guragegna, Agewigna, and many other languages
in the southern region of Ethiopia.
Tigrigna is a language for about nine million peopleparticularly in Tigrai region of Ethiopia and in Eretria.
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Introduction . . .
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keyboard - The most popular input method
two common types of keyboards: the physical and the
virtual keyboards
for mobile computing devices - The virtual keyboard
fits on their small screen size
virtual keyboards seem to be the best choice in
many situations
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2. The ChallengesKeyboard design
Keyboard Mapping and Input Methods (ManyEfforts since the 1980s)
Standard Keyboard Mapping:
Typewriter layout,
Phonetic layout;
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Ethiopic Web Pages
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Advantage:
As a result of many efforts Ethiopic is Unicode
supported. Ethiopic Unicode (1200 137F)
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Standard Key-pad for mobile phones
Ethiopic Key-pad for mobile phones
Composing Template-based Text
The mobile phone input method design
(Previous efforts)
By Shiferaw Abebe, Solomon Atnafu and Samuel Kinde,
Addis Ababa University
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Keyboard LayoutUpdating the
Keyboard layout
Key press
Event
CharacterMapping to Character code
Key press Event
Figure: Work f low o f the vir tual Ethiop ic keyboard system
3. System Layout Design
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Basic Character selection set component
NonBasic Character selection component
Figure: Proposed Layou t for the vir tual Ethiopic keyboard
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4. Implementation
The System Development Environment Android operating system based smart phones are selected.
The basic reasons to choose Android platform are that:
It uses Freetype, a free and open source bitmap and vector font engine,
which supports Unicode text layout and glyph rendering. EthiopicUnicode fonts, such as Microsoft's Nyala and GFZ's Geez Free Zemen,
can be used to render text using Freetype on the Android platform. Other
platforms such as the Palm OS lack the internationalization support
required to fully meet the needs of Ethiopic software development.
It comes with immediate availability to mobile versions of Google search,Google Maps, and Google Products that allow independent developers to
create their own array of applications at a much less restrictive cost.
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Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard System (VEK)
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The Main Panel
Figure : VEK on Android Emulator
The Top
Panel
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Figure: on the Android based HTC G1 smart phone
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Figure: (A)-The panel for Ethiopic and Amharic numerals and
Mathematical symbols; (B)- the Virtual QWERTY keyboard.Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard - Android Phones
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5. Conclusion
YES, WE CAN
YES; Technology Should embrace culture,
a virtual keyboard layout is designed for more than 340
Ethiopic characters,
multi-script text writing is supported, users can switch
between our VEK and the Virtual QWERTY keyboard.
Any mobile application can be localized,
Opens the way to include other smart phones, such as
Nokia and other mobile operating systems.
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ThankYouVirtual Ethiopic Keyboard - Android Phones