Here's a Na'vi Keyboard on iOS

Started by tshuhan, June 23, 2016, 08:26:50 AM

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Tirea Aean

#20
Quote from: tshuhan on February 23, 2017, 08:48:52 AM
Yours definitely looks more thought out. I'd love to see this layout become a standard one so people can focus on learning the language itself. That was my intention and half a year has passed I'm still where I was in 2016...

Quote from: Tirea Aean on February 23, 2017, 08:39:27 AM
Edit:

But there IS z in Na'vi...

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Yes, I had thought about the following things and features:

* Large user base of QWERTY keyboards that are very used to it
* One keystroke one phoneme (digraphs like px tx kx ts ng are considered each one phoneme unit despite being made of two ascii chars)
* Have Na'vi letters attempt to map to closest non-existent char

This way, it is very familiar and very fast.

The only major drawback to this kxwerty layout is it is very exactly tailored to Only be used with the Na'vi language, so typing another language with it isn't really a thing.

This layout of mine started on Windows and then made its way to Mac OS. Then I hacked the Open Source Android app called Hacker's Keyboard to port it to Android. And now it's on iOS thanks to you! Nice work. It looks great! :D

The only thing stopping this layout being cross platform to Linux is how xkb works. It hates digraphs as one keystroke. I found no possible way to write an xkb derivative of en_US keyboard on Linux that has all the crucial features of kxwerty. Meh. intl it is...

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Tirea Aean

HRH! I just now noticed "mo" and "tätxaw". That is AWESOME ;D

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Toliman

Quote from: tshuhan on February 22, 2017, 10:37:06 PM
I'm working on updating the layout to be a lot more like that on Android. Stay tuned ;D
Txantsan :D Sunu oeru :)

eejmensenikbenhet

Sunu oer nìtxan! The KxWERTY layout is familiar to me since I've been using it forever on my pc, so converting to typing on mobile is much simpler now.

Just to give you some background for the locations of certain letters on the keyboard:
Very early on in the development of the language, a system was in place that rendered a "c" for "ts" (so the word tsun would be noted as *cun), yet the now used digraph was chosen in favor over single letters. Furthermore the softer sounds of the "d" and "b" aren't present in the Na'vi language so both have been a suitable location for the ejective equivalents, with "q" making place for "kx". The absence of "j", "x" and "g" opened up two more spots for "ì", "ä" and "ng" (resp.) and these are fairly close to their unaltered brothers. (Rutxe correct me if I'm not explaining this correctly.)

Tirea Aean

Quote from: eejmensenikbenhet on February 23, 2017, 07:50:05 PM
Sunu oer nìtxan! The KxWERTY layout is familiar to me since I've been using it forever on my pc, so converting to typing on mobile is much simpler now.

:D I'm glad that KxWERTY has been good to you :)

QuoteJust to give you some background for the locations of certain letters on the keyboard:
Very early on in the development of the language, a system was in place that rendered a "c" for "ts" (so the word tsun would be noted as *cun), yet the now used digraph was chosen in favor over single letters. Furthermore the softer sounds of the "d" and "b" aren't present in the Na'vi language so both have been a suitable location for the ejective equivalents, with "q" making place for "kx". The absence of "j", "x" and "g" opened up two more spots for "ì", "ä" and "ng" (resp.) and these are fairly close to their unaltered brothers. (Rutxe correct me if I'm not explaining this correctly.)

Yes, this is precisely the thought process I had in creating KxWERTY.

Other historic attempts to type Na'vi chars on desktop, and the Keyboard layouts developed by the community over time (if anyone is interested in this)

0) Alt codes and keyboard key combinations that produce ì and ä
1) the one where only this change was made to qwerty: j -> ì and q -> ä
2) the one where only this change was made to qwerty: [ -> ì and ] -> ä
3) the one where where ctrl+alt+i -> ì and ctrl+alt+a -> ä OR right-alt+i -> ì and right-alt+a -> ä
4) kxwerty for Windows then Mac then Android, now iOS :D

I created kxwerty because I found alt-codes and key combinations just to produce one letter to be immensely annoying and so unproductive. And like I said above, I wanted to create the fastest yet most familiar-style keyboard for typing in Na'vi ever. And for this reason I think, it has become the most popular keyboard used to date, aside from International layouts built in to the OS. (or default mobile keyboards that support hold-drag for accents)

tshuhan

Wanted to bump this up even though it's been a reeeallly long time.

I have been busy with startup work for the past 3 years, and my Apple developer account was cancelled because I wanted to save that $119 a year. Now that Canada is under lockdown we've got so much time on hand and I watched the movie again and finally mustered up the energy to make the app&keyboard support the latest iOS 13 and dark mode.

There hasn't been much new in terms of functionality, although I really hope to have something similar to Learn Na'vi's dictionary update soon. So cool!

Toliman

Welcome back, nice to see you here again :) :)

eejmensenikbenhet

#27
Hi there, really cool to see a new update! Thanks for doing this and welcome back of course.
Redownloaded it, it's ready for use.

Suggestion: (I'm not familiar with iOS coding at all so forgive me if I'm suggesting impossible stuff HRH) is it possible to make hold-drag letters? For example if I wanted to type in all-caps, even the "x" and the "g" in the ejectives and ng. For example: it is impossible to write KALTXÌ (with the Eywa keyboard), only KALTxÌ, and though some prefer this style of writing, some prefer the other. If hold and drag letters are possible (like accents in regular keyboards), why not give them an option?

Also, something that may just be going wrong on my device. The Eywa keyboard seems to take up more screenspace than my other keyboards, with an extra top bar of grey, and some of the buttons have a different colour. (Uploaded two screenshots to show the difference.)