Input Method Development

[dda]

Well, no. the 11,172 syllables you mention are *not* letters. The fact
that Korean combines letters by syllables [Syllabic blocks in
Wikipedia] doesn't make these syllables "letters". The Korean Keyboard
uses 26 keys for the 33 letters [19 consonants, counting geminated
consonants as separate letters, and 14 vowels] used in Modern Korean.

OTOH, the fact that the Korean writing system is non-linear makes
systems like that proposed by Jeremiah impractical, since the output
is variable, and can't be mapped without ambiguities to an xml
description file. There are two algorithms in the Unicode standard to
convert between Korean syllables and a romanization system -- the
romanization system itself doesn't matter and can be remapped to
anything, really --  and this system appears to be the cleanest.

I agree that a system of plugins/callbacks could do fine, if it can
handle "resetting" output: eg typing gks <bkspc> f would output
successively:
ㅎ -> 하 -> 한 -> 하 -> 할 [Unicode 0x1112, 0xd558, 0xd55c, 0xd558,
0xd560]. Being able to "backtrack" is quite necessary in this case.

Needless to say I'd be quite interested to contribute in such an effort.

-- 
dda

On Feb 7, 2008 4:13 PM, Sébastien Lorquet <squalyl at gmail.com> wrote:
> (keeping dda at sungnyemun.org and communitylist in the loop)
>
> Hehe,
> This is totally understandable. :) We will explain to you the best as we
> can.
>
> If you want to make a korean keyboard with a key for each letter then you'll
> need a keyboard with...
>
> (sit down before next line)
>
>  ... 11,172 letters, ie from \uAC00 to \uD7A3 + 24 "single letters" or jamos