Behold the Table Driven Text Service, Part 11 (The knights who say நீ, redux, #1)

Prior posts in the series:

• 0 (You have to start somewhere)
• 1 (Starting with a dictionary simple in every way)
• 2 (Three ways to convert!)
• 3 (Where do keystrokes come in?)
• 4 (Specifying when to modify, if not how)
• 5 (All about the language, baby!)
• 6 (it is sufficient to be iconic, aka DaYi, DaYi Aynu!)
• 7 (Configuration 'junk in the trunk', part 1)
• 8 (Configuration 'junk in the trunk', part 2)
• 9 (Will you be content if I tell you how some content can be defined?)
• 10 ("Even Jove nods," Atlas shrugged, "so we'll convert their old files, now.")

Okay, we have now gone through a bunch of information on the Table Driven Text Service component and the text files that define the identity and behavior of individual Text Profiles.

So what happens next, exactly?

Well, let's start with the Text Profile I discussed, demo'd, and did not yet give to anyone in And we are the knights who say நீ (NII).

The framework I am using is the same a in that post, plus the feedback in the comments. Like the following for each consonant:

"n"   = "ந்"
"na"  = "ந"
"naa" = "நா"
"ni"  = "நி"
"nii" = "நீ"
"nu"  = "நு"
"nuu" = "நூ"
"ne"  = "நெ"
"nee" = "நே"
"nai" = "நை"
"no"  = "நொ"
"noo" = "நோ"
"nau" = "நௌ"

And then the following pure (independent) vowels:

a    அ
aa   ஆ
i    இ
ii    ஈ
u    உ
uu   ஊ
e    எ
ee   ஏ
ai    ஐ
o    ஒ
oo   ஓ
au   ஔ

And the following consonants:

k    க்
ng   ங்
c    ச்
j    ஜ்
ny   ஞ்
tt    ட்
d    ட்
nnn  ண்
th    த்
n    ந்
nn  ன்
p    ப்
f    ஃப்
m   ம்
y   ய்
r    ர்
rr   ற்
l    ல்
L    ள்
zh   ழ்
v    வ்
ss   ஷ்
s    ஸ்
sh   ஶ்
h    ஹ்

But as others have pointed out, this is kind of tedious -- there are some many combinations that really should be handled by using different cases rather than requiring a person to type two vowels.

Now this is currently a limitation in TableTextService.DLL but it may nlot always be -- some future version my address the limitation.

In fact if you look at the Amharic input method in Vista and its text file, you'll see that it mixes upper and lower case on the input side, in anticipation of that limitation being addressed at some point. In the meantime , when you have multiple entries with the same letter differing oinly by case, they will simply both show up in the candidate list.

So what is the principle here, native Tamil speakers? Taking the above lists, which ones would you change the left side entries with, and how?

When I get back all of the rest of the feedback, we'll replace my "based on Unicode character names" input method with one that will perhaps be a bit closer to intuitive!

Then we'll configure the various settings and produce our ideal Tamil input method....

So, any native speakers want to chime in on their replacements? I have tried to do the ones that others suggested in the comments of that post, but I'd like to get them all done -- concentrate on the second and third lists above, noting how

l    ல்
ll    ள்

became

l    ல்
L    ள்

and going from there....

Now of course this is kind of a transliteration keyboard, but it does not have to be if there are keyboards that print just Tami letters on them and we wanted to have this input method match it. Does anyone have such a keyboard? And if so could they take a picture of it?

This post brought to you by நீ (U+0ba8 U+0bc0, a.k.a. TAMIL LETTER NA + TAMIL VOWEL SIGN II)