Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#41

Post by delfinom » Mon, Sep 02, 2024, 10:47 PM UTC

saylisteins wrote: post #33

crazygringo wrote: post #28

I've visited all the links and honestly still don't have the slightest idea what this input method does, or exactly what problem it's trying to solve, or why it's a good solution to the problem. I found the video [1] but it has no audio or explanations at all. I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods, rather than wanting to input your desired character directly. For languages like Chinese I under…

> I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods I'm from Morocco, and most people here (myself included) are accustomed to typing on an AZERTY (or QWERTY) keyboard. Typing in Arabic using a standard keyboard layout can be quite cumbersome and slow for us (Most people never took the time to learn it), using latin alphabet for us is just more practical, and doesn't require you to learn a new way to type…

[flagged]

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#42

Post by max_ » Mon, Sep 02, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

beAbU wrote: post #15

It's interesting, having grown up in Africa, and lived there almost 35 years, reading, writing and speaking an African language, being surrounfed by at least 10 other African languages and seeing them written, that I have never ever in my entire life encountered this writing system. I think the product is a great technological achievement, but... I would warn against the generalisation of "African" in this context. I…

You haven't seen Amharic on Ethiopian Airline planes?

The project supports many other languages which justifies the use of "African".

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#43

Post by rafram » Mon, Sep 02, 2024, 11:14 PM UTC

saylisteins wrote: post #33

crazygringo wrote: post #28

I've visited all the links and honestly still don't have the slightest idea what this input method does, or exactly what problem it's trying to solve, or why it's a good solution to the problem. I found the video [1] but it has no audio or explanations at all. I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods, rather than wanting to input your desired character directly. For languages like Chinese I under…

> I also don't understand why you'd want phonetic input methods I'm from Morocco, and most people here (myself included) are accustomed to typing on an AZERTY (or QWERTY) keyboard. Typing in Arabic using a standard keyboard layout can be quite cumbersome and slow for us (Most people never took the time to learn it), using latin alphabet for us is just more practical, and doesn't require you to learn a new way to type…

Really? That’s surprising to me. The Arabic keyboard layout is very simple to learn, and people in the Eastern Arabic-speaking world (Egypt, Jordan, etc.) seem to use it pretty universally. Obviously people write online with the “chat alphabet,” but I’ve never heard of anyone in the Levant actually using it to input Arabic characters.

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#44

Post by pentamassiv » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 12:06 AM UTC

pythonbrad wrote: post #34

MehdiHK wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, didn't realize that. How does it handle key input in Windows? Text Services Framework or something else?

The initial work was a prototype, we are currently working on the usage of text service for windows, and IBUS for Linux (mainly Wayland environment). But the next release, will take a time, since we are not familiar with these technologies. https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim/issues/242

You could update the dependency "enigo" to the current version. I've implemented experimental support for Wayland. It can use Wayland protocols or libei. There will probably be bugs that's why it's hidden behind feature flags.

I'm the maintainer, so if you need anything, please let me know

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#45

Post by pentamassiv » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 12:08 AM UTC

MehdiHK wrote: post #31

pythonbrad wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is supported through https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim-wish

Oh, didn't realize that. How does it handle key input in Windows? Text Services Framework or something else?

I didn't look at the code but the Cargo.toml file says it's using enigo as it's dependency. You can use that to simulate input an Windows, macOS and Linux

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#46

Post by pythonbrad » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 12:29 AM UTC

pentamassiv wrote: post #44

pythonbrad wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial work was a prototype, we are currently working on the usage of text service for windows, and IBUS for Linux (mainly Wayland environment). But the next release, will take a time, since we are not familiar with these technologies. https://github.com/pythonbrad/afrim/issues/242

You could update the dependency "enigo" to the current version. I've implemented experimental support for Wayland. It can use Wayland protocols or libei. There will probably be bugs that's why it's hidden behind feature flags. I'm the maintainer, so if you need anything, please let me know

Thanks, currently I am using Debian (Wayland) and it will be great to test this enigo feature.

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#47

Post by filleduchaos » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:10 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #36

I'm wondering what problem you experienced that this is a solution for. "African languages" is not, in my experience, a single class of languages. There are large differences between the languages, with most of the northern languages borrowing heavily from Arabic, most of the central African/West African languages borrowing from French and the rest are different enough that they can't be considered dialects.

What does that have to do with an IME library/project?

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#48

Post by notamy » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:27 AM UTC

pythonbrad wrote: post #25

firefoxd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Adlam for Fulani [1]. Widely spoken in west Africa. However, I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the writing system. The word for "yes" in fulani does not translate in writing. The best way I can write it is HIiiII. Imagine the lowercase i goes down in tone. Then the last two uppercase i shoots up. I don't know if any writing system supports this. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlam_script

Using the phonetic representation (IPA), you can obtain a writing system similar to the pinyin. Hanyu Pinyin Hànyǔ Pīnyīn Fāng'àn Bopomofo ㄏㄢˋ ㄩˇ ㄆㄧㄣㄧㄣㄈㄤㄢˋ IPA [xân.ỳ pʰín.ín fáŋ.ân] Cameroonian dialect are written using the GACL who is similar to the IPA. Clafrica: Pookai2t peu2nze2e2 n*kut ! Shʉ̄pāpə̀m (Bamoun): Pookɛ́t pә́nzéé ŋkut !

> Cameroonian dialect are written using the GACL who is similar to the IPA.

What exactly is the GACL? Trying to find information on it returns this HN comment as the top result, and a bunch of language-unrelated results after that.

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#49

Post by teractiveodular » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:34 AM UTC

beAbU wrote: post #15

It's interesting, having grown up in Africa, and lived there almost 35 years, reading, writing and speaking an African language, being surrounfed by at least 10 other African languages and seeing them written, that I have never ever in my entire life encountered this writing system. I think the product is a great technological achievement, but... I would warn against the generalisation of "African" in this context. I…

FWIW, the only languages supported appear to be Amharic (modern Ethiopian), Ge'ez (classic Ethiopian, basically only used in church liturgy today), and one rather obscure language (Nufi/Fefe, ~140k speakers) spoken in a small part of Cameroon. This is indeed a pretty long way from being a pan-African solution.

Re: Show HN: A modern way to type in African languages

#50

Post by teractiveodular » Tue, Sep 03, 2024, 1:39 AM UTC

firefoxd wrote: post #17

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #4

Apart from Ethiopia, are there any places where they don't use either Latin or Arabic scripts in everyday life? There are technically a whole bunch of alphabets of course but they aren't used much afaik. Maybe the Tuareg script? Is that used by people in North Africa beyond bilingual signs?

There is Adlam for Fulani [1]. Widely spoken in west Africa. However, I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the writing system. The word for "yes" in fulani does not translate in writing. The best way I can write it is HIiiII. Imagine the lowercase i goes down in tone. Then the last two uppercase i shoots up. I don't know if any writing system supports this. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlam_script

> While they were teenagers in the late 1980s, brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry devised the alphabetic script to transcribe the Fulani language.[3][6] One method they used involved them closing their eyes and drawing lines. After looking at their drawn shapes, they would pick which ones would look the most to them like a good glyph for a letter, and associate it with whatever sound they felt it would represent.

I'm not sure if I should be impressed that this has turned into an actual script, or disappointed that so many people thought this was a good idea.

Hot take: artificially creating new scripts that need to be taught from scratch to everybody and require new fonts, layout engines, etc hinders language adoption/preservation instead of helping it.