Solomon Atnafu - Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard (VEK)

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Andualem Workneh, Yonan Getachew,

Gedion TAMENE, Solomon Atnafu,emails:, [email protected], [email protected],

[email protected] , [email protected]

November 11, 2010

M4D 2010, Kampala, Uganda

This project is partially supported by UNECA

Addis Ababa University

The Virtual Ethiopic Keyboardfor Smart Phones


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Outline

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1. Introduction

2. The Challenges of Virtual Keyboard Design

for Ethiopic Character Set

3. System Layout Design

4. Implementation

5. Conclusions

Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard - Android Phones


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Ethiopia At the horn of Africa, about 1.1 sqkm,

A country of more than 80 million,

45% < 15 years

More than 75 languages,

The Official working Language

(Amharic, with Ethiopic script),

Use of other languages at regionalgovernment level,

Many initiatives of localization



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1. Introduction

The Ethiopic Character Set

Amharic is the working language of the federal government

of Ethiopia (a country with a population of more than 80

million) and is spoken and written as a first or second

language in many parts of the country. Among the other languages that use Ethiopic script are

Tigrigna, Guragegna, Agewigna, and many other languages

in the southern region of Ethiopia.

Tigrigna is a language for about nine million peopleparticularly in Tigrai region of Ethiopia and in Eretria.

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Introduction . . .

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keyboard - The most popular input method

two common types of keyboards: the physical and the

virtual keyboards

for mobile computing devices - The virtual keyboard

fits on their small screen size

virtual keyboards seem to be the best choice in

many situations



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2. The ChallengesKeyboard design

Keyboard Mapping and Input Methods (ManyEfforts since the 1980s)

Standard Keyboard Mapping:

Typewriter layout,

Phonetic layout;



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Ethiopic Web Pages



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Advantage:

As a result of many efforts Ethiopic is Unicode

supported. Ethiopic Unicode (1200 137F)



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Standard Key-pad for mobile phones

Ethiopic Key-pad for mobile phones

Composing Template-based Text

The mobile phone input method design

(Previous efforts)

By Shiferaw Abebe, Solomon Atnafu and Samuel Kinde,

Addis Ababa University



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Keyboard LayoutUpdating the

Keyboard layout

Key press

Event

CharacterMapping to Character code

Key press Event

Figure: Work f low o f the vir tual Ethiop ic keyboard system

3. System Layout Design



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Basic Character selection set component

NonBasic Character selection component

Figure: Proposed Layou t for the vir tual Ethiopic keyboard



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4. Implementation

The System Development Environment Android operating system based smart phones are selected.

The basic reasons to choose Android platform are that:

It uses Freetype, a free and open source bitmap and vector font engine,

which supports Unicode text layout and glyph rendering. EthiopicUnicode fonts, such as Microsoft's Nyala and GFZ's Geez Free Zemen,

can be used to render text using Freetype on the Android platform. Other

platforms such as the Palm OS lack the internationalization support

required to fully meet the needs of Ethiopic software development.

It comes with immediate availability to mobile versions of Google search,Google Maps, and Google Products that allow independent developers to

create their own array of applications at a much less restrictive cost.



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Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard System (VEK)

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The Main Panel

Figure : VEK on Android Emulator

The Top

Panel



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Figure: on the Android based HTC G1 smart phone



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Figure: (A)-The panel for Ethiopic and Amharic numerals and

Mathematical symbols; (B)- the Virtual QWERTY keyboard.Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard - Android Phones


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5. Conclusion

YES, WE CAN

YES; Technology Should embrace culture,

a virtual keyboard layout is designed for more than 340

Ethiopic characters,

multi-script text writing is supported, users can switch

between our VEK and the Virtual QWERTY keyboard.

Any mobile application can be localized,

Opens the way to include other smart phones, such as

Nokia and other mobile operating systems.



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ThankYouVirtual Ethiopic Keyboard - Android Phones

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Solomon Atnafu - Virtual Ethiopic Keyboard (VEK)