Keyman Update for 7 July 2023

This blog reports on significant Keyman product and keyboard development updates over the two weeks ending on 7 July 2023.

Geez Frontier Foundation keyboard and predictive text updates

GFF have released a series of updates to their Ethiopian and Eritrean language keyboards.

Most significantly, GFF Ethiopic v1.0: This is a rewrite of the GFF Ethiopic keyboard that was last updated for Keyman 7. The keyboard supports input of all 523 symbols defined in the Unicode standard for Ethiopic. The package supports the composition of 59 additional variant forms available in the Abyssinica SIL font.

Tablet and phone layouts have also been added (#2276).

The following updates address a number of small issues and enhance documentation:

• GFF Tigre v1.0.1 (#2268)
• GFF Tigrinya Eritrea v2.0.1 (#2269)
• GFF Tigrinya Ethiopia v2.0.2 (#2270)
• GFF Awngi & Xamtanga v1.0.2 (#2271)
• GFF Blin v1.5.4 (#2272)
• GFF Harari v1.0.3 (#2273)
• GFF Gurage Legacy v0.5 (#2275)
• GFF Gurage v1.0 (#2274)

And finally, three predictive text dictionary updates:

• GFF Tigre Lexical Model v1.0.2 adds the most used word into the wordlist, missing before due to a technical issue (#215).
• GFF Tigrinya-Eritrea Lexical Model v1.0: The lexical model is based on the content found from 131 issues of the Haddas Eritrea (ሓዳስ ኤርትራ) newspaper. The wordlist better reflects the spelling conventions, and word choices, of Tigrinya as spoken in Eritrea as compared to the predecessor “GFF Tigrinya” lexical model which in turn is based on the UniLex project which makes no regional distinction (#216).
• GFF Tigrinya-Ethiopia Lexical Model v1.0: The lexical model is based on the content found from 100 issues of the Wegahta (ወጋሕታ) newspaper. The wordlist better reflects the spelling conventions, and word choices, of Tigrinya as spoken in Eritrea as compared to the predecessor “GFF Tigrinya” lexical model which in turn is based on the UniLex project which makes no regional distinction (#217).

Credit: Daniel Yacob developed all the GFF keyboards and dictionaries.

New Gondi INSCRIPT (Gunjala) keyboard now available

This Gondi (Gunjala) keyboard has been designed for typing the Adilabad Gondi (wsg) language spoken in the northern part of Telangana State of India. The keyboard layout is based on an INSCRIPT-based layout (#2267).

New Behdini Kurdish (Arabic script) keyboard now available

This keyboard is designed for typing Behdini Kurdish in the Arabic script. It is loosely based on a standard Arabic keyboard layout. Some characters from a standard Arabic keyboard that are not required by Behdini Kurdish have been added to the right-alt keyboard layers (#2266).

Additional Keyboard Updates

• Updated Abyssinica SIL font (#2263)
• Some minor bug fixes for nasa_yuwe (#2284), hanunoo (#2265), and ahom_star (#2285) keyboards