[SHR] illume predictive keyboard is too slow

Helge Hafting helge.hafting at hist.no
Mon Feb 2 15:26:50 CET 2009


Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:43:39 +0100 Helge Hafting <helge.hafting at hist.no> said:
> 
>> Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
>>> On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:32:48 +0100 Helge Hafting <helge.hafting at hist.no>
>>> said:
>>>> I hope things like this will be possible, if a new dictionary format is 
>>>> realized. It is ok if typing "for" suggests "fôr" as an alternative, but 
>>>> "før" should not come up unless the user types "f" "ø" "r". In which 
>>>> case "o" must not be suggested...
>>> ok - how do you romanise norwegian then? example. in german ö -> oe, ü ->
>>> ue, ß -> ss, etc. - there is a set of romanisation rules that can convert
>>> any such char to 1 or more roman letters. i was hoping to be even more
>>> lenient with ö -> o being valid too for the lazy :) japanese has
>>> romanisation rules - so does chinese... norwegian must (eg æ -> ae for
>>> example).
>>>
>> Usually, one doesn't romanize Norwegian. There are some rules: æ->ae, 
>> ø->oe, å->aa.  They are next to useless, because ae and oe occur 
>> naturally in many words where æ or ø does not belong, and these double 
>> vowels are pronounced differently as well. A Norwegian seeing "oe" in a 
>> word may be able to figure out if this means "ø" or if it really is 
>> supposed to be "oe", but this may need a context of several words. And 
>> it looks funny/wrong - similar to how it looks silly transcribing "x" as 
>> "ks" and write "ksylophone".
> 
> oh thats not bad! then it's just like english! (you get used to the vague
> insanity of it all sooner or later!) :)
> but seriously - if your name is nønæn, and you move to japan, and have to fill
> out a form for your bank account name - they will see the ø and æ and go "ummm.
> we can't do that - can you please use normal roman text?"

Sure, in that case, it is ø->oe, æ->ae and å->aa. (Or some will go ø->o 
and å->a because their name looks less mangled that way.) While this may 
be ok for opening a bank account in japan, it is not something ordinary 
people will want to consider for typing text messages on a phone. 
Simple phones have had æøå in the T9 system for ages. (with "æ" and "å" 
on the same key as "a", and "ø" on the same key as "o")
[...]

> just like my example above - but i guess i was being stricter. the stodgey old
> banking system isn't going to go adapt like modern sports data systenms. its
> "go roman - or go home". :)

Sure. I just hope the freerunner doesn't evolve into a "stodgey old 
thing" as far as keyboards are considered. Looks like it doesn't, so 
I'll be fine. :-)
[...]
> hmm. how interesting. i have always been baffled why there is a UK qwerty
> layout vs US - thre UK is the only place that uses it... all other english
> speaking countries i know use US qwerty (and if UK qwerty was nicely killed
> off.. it wouldn't need to be US qwerty - just qwerty) :)

Surely this is because of the £-sign? (And € too, in later standards.)
I don't think they are ready to give up the pound.

> ok - but there is a way to do this. when stuck on your friends pc when visiting
> them in california, and they dont have compose-modes enabled... how do you type
> æ and ø etc. that was basically the q - there must be some accepted mechanism
> for decimation/conversion. seemingly it's the obvious: æ -> ae, ø -> o etc.

My preferred way is to open a webpage and paste the special characters I 
need. These days, any pc seems to support æøå even if the keyboard 
itself doesn't. In a situation where æøå cannot be entered (such as the 
sms app in SHR which erroneously filter out non-ascii), I write my 
sentences very carefully avoiding these letters. For I don't want to 
spell wrong deliberately, not even transcriptions. Those that care a lot 
less about spelling use more transcriptions - and might even use 
transcriptions on a phone that has æøå, because their phone is badly 
adapted to Norwegian and have æøå in weird places. (Because the 
manufacturers aren't really into adding a couple of extra _hardware_ 
keys.) Software keyboards are great!

>> Excellent!
>> So if I have a wordlist and make a keyboard, then a dictionary can be 
>> synthesized so there will be no unnecessary confusion between o and ø, 
>> because both letters exists as keys?
> 
> correct. as long as the dict matching doesnt drop extra info - ie normalize o
> -> ø. currently it does.  but the rest o the code doesn't. it's just the dict
> matching engine - which as we have been discussing... needs work. :)
> 
The dictionary file problably need to have some metadata anyway - such 
as what language it is for. It could also have a list of what non-ascii 
letters to use as-is. And assume standard romanization rules for the rest.

Helge Hafting




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