Indi, Phonetic Sinhala keyboards were available at least for the last ten years, so this is no big deal. The issue is to have a STANDARD Sinhala phonetic keyboard, so even people like myself, who do not want to go through the hassle of learning Wijesekera keyboard, can start typing Sinhala fast. Unless otherwise we solve this issue having effective Sinhala web sites will only be a distant dream. Other than Sinhala typists, and extremely few enthusiasts I do not think anyone can really type using the Wijesekera keyboard. (It was designed for typewriters and not for computers.) For the moment I settle for romanised Sinhala typing, like they do in Malaysia.

I am a writier and I do most of my writings in Sinhala. I use the computer with the Wijesekera keyboard. (Not the above key board) Most writers who write in Sinhala use the Wijesekera keyboard. ( I’m not talking about the computer specialists who creat fonts but about the people who use the PC to WRITE, )
I know some senior writers who switched to a PC from the old fasion type writer, prefer the same key board. Making of a new Sinhala sinhalese font must consider the requirements of the writers (people who are currently using the computer to write). This is not going to be a smoooth shift if one suggest to use a completely new keyboard that is totally alien to WRITERS.

One addition –
People who basically write(type) and think in English and now want to start writing(typing) in Sinhala may find the above keyboard easy. But the issue of making a better sinhala font goes beyond that. Key objective must be to bring people currently write and think in Sinhala in to digital arena. Wijesekera layout is the most common and comprerhensive layout. It is easy to learn even for a person who can not write in English. I find Pushpananda Ekenayake’s fonts very handy when it comes to serious work. He has produced some web fonts too.

I use the Wijesekara keyboard in all my work, and it really didn’t take me very long to get the hang of things. Will check the font out.

Tried it out…should be workable for blogging because no one’s really going to care about finer points of proper spelling. But there is a problem when trying something like ‘se’…to get that right you need to type the ‘e’ first (for the kombuwa) and then the ‘s’. Nitpicking nitpicking I know, but have you given any thought to character replacement?

Lohan: There is a class of typists who are trained to use the Wijesekara keyboard. That’s fine with me. The problem is that there’s no way my mom or most bloggers are going to buy and learn that keyboard. Amma was typing in 1 minute, as was my generally tech-illiterate Lakshman Mama. I don’t care if any current typists change, this is just to try make life easier for a few people close to me. This is intended for bloggers, not typesetters or the public at large.

Chanuka: What is a phonetic font? I’ve been looking for one. This thing is pretty simple to use, should try it and see.

<>Morquendi: Cool. The kombuva is a problem, cause it comes before. Kombuva is mapped to the letter ‘e’. If I write ‘mee’ i have to type ‘em’. Also, to type ‘Ro’ I have to type ‘ero’. I dunno what character replacement is, but I’ll look into it. It’d also be useful for stuff like Dayanna, where the tail changes. Please nitpick, this is just a first version and I’m not very good for testing it.

I was just looking at the Wijesekara layout (SL1134) and to type my last name – samarajiva – i write

I – D – R – C – S – J

compared to

s – m – r – j – i -v – a

on a phonetic keyboard. It may work for trained typists, but there’s no way for casual users (like Amma) to write in Sinhala. Lohan says that “Key objective must be to bring people currently write and think in Sinhala in to digital arena”. Insomuch as Amma and Lakshman Mama are those people, Wijesekera doesn’t help. Wijesekera has just enabled a class of trained typists. It’s like ancient Egypt with one class of scribes.

In working with Sarvodaya I’ve found that deploying anything to districts requires

A) Money nobody has
B) Training nobody can do

Wijesekera requires

A) Buying keyboards
B) Training typists

I would rather deploy something that uses existing cheap-ass keyboards and requires minimal training. People know the alphabet, so they you don’t even have to use stickers or anything. As Gihan Dias’ said in Development of Standards (PDF). “We recognised that many casual Sinhala users, who do not use a pre-printed Sinhala keyboard, need either a phonetic or transliteration-based keyboard.”

Anyways, right now you have zero Sri Lankan blogging, which is the main point for me.

See I’m not a tech guy right, so you’re going to have to excuse me. But where I used to work I had this little app running in the background that would replace characters as I typed. You just run the exe when you’re writing in Sinhala.

Like in Word you have a replacement thingy that turns a :) into a smiley and a (c) into the copyright symbol?

With your font if I type ‘r’ and then ‘i’ I just get that ‘ispilla’ thing over the ‘rayanna’. But what the replacer would do is if I punched in a ‘i’ right after a ‘r’ it would replace both with a pretty ‘riyanna’, instead of the rayanna with an ispilla on top of it, which doesn’t really look right. Made life a lot simpler.

And just for the record, this one took me a LOT less time to figure out than the Wijesekara keyboard.

Hi Indi,

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate all this hard work you’re doing for the advancement of “Sinhalese blogging.” It’s great that someone from the community has the initiative and the skills – and the dedication – to get it done somehow. Maybe this information is already found in your writings but can I ask (I know this sounds abrupt)…. what is your intention? What I mean is are you trying to have a standard Romanized Sinhalese – where everyone blogs in the Roman script except in Sinhalese (like ayubowan, kohomada, balla, poosa etc), or are you endeavouring to make a font in the Sinhalese script that people can make appear by phonetically typing out the words using the roman alphabet?

On a side note, I wonder whether we can come up with a term for “blogging” in the Sinhalese language :)

Here are two blog sites in languages other than English that have worked really and look aesthetically pleasing:

1) The largest Persian blogging site (apparently) – http://www.weblogestan.org – the Farsi script looks much more complex and detailed than Sinhalese (well at least I used to think so), but it looks so neat and tidy and clear here.

2) A blog site in the Tamil language – http://musings.weblogs.us/archives/167 – it looks very nice as well. And even though the Tamil font is small, it is so clear.

I’m wondering, why is it that I can see these two scripts on my computer without having to download anything?

Nicely done, Indi.

One problem (when using the font in Word, for instance) is that shortcuts like “Alt-I” are grabbed by the application before the font sees them, so it won’t work. (Alt-I = insert). For the same reason, Alt-F, Alt-E, Alt-V etc won’t work in a browser.
A font I saw some place (lug sinhala list maybe ?) got around this by explicitly mapping Alt-Gr instead of Alt.

A couple of small visual bugs: (ask someone who knows to draw you a picture ;)
the ra + u sound is “ru” But it’s not written the same way, it’s written sort of like “ray”
the ra + oo sound is “roo”. But it’s written completely differently too.

Basically, the modifiers for the “ra” sound are exceptions.

It’s the same with the “ka” and “tha” consonants when a “u” modifier is applied. It’s not written in the conventional way.

Heshan, this is probably because your operating system natively bundles support for Tamil script. You don’t need to download it, because it comes preinstalled. Farsi, I’m not sure; but I think the same situation there. This is by virtue of having a lot more speakers (and writers) of the language.

The problem with Sinhala is that the major OS didn’t see a need to support electronic writings in that script till quite recently. Harsha (in a recent comment elsewhere on the site) assures us that Microsoft will bundle Sinhala support in Windows quite soon and if you use Linux, Sinhala support is already quite good in Pango apps (ie: Gnome). Not too sure about KDE support yet.

Thimal: ta for the corrections. If you switch to the International Keyboard (Language Bar) it reclaims the ALT button. It’s only the right-alt. I’d prefer to have it work with the normal keyboard, but this is what French and Dutch and everybody does. One thing I’ve noticed is that I have to check the language bar for each application.

I’ve got to figure out what to do with those individual variations. Ru is a special one, as is Dhu. I was wondering if I should just stick oddballs on the Z or X keys. Another option is to just make them behave like everything else (or both). This is just 0.1, it needs heavy revision.

Heshan: thanks man. I hope it’s Sri Lankan blogging more than Sinhalese blogging.

Meh. The lang-bar completely failed me (nothing to do with the font, it’s just the weird setup I have on my work machine. I don’t run as admin, and consequently, the lang-bar won’t activate). A normal user gets EN-GB or nada, pretty much. Alt-Gr still works, in case anyone else is using the font and can’t get the language bar activated for some reason. I needed to login as admin, change the settings and relogin back as myself before things got sorted.

Might I suggest steering clear of punctuation where possible ? Mapping chars onto punctuation renders it unusable as punctuation and I’m sure some C programmers would miss their semicolon ;) (and they can’t do the weird winking smiley, which is worse).

I notice that Kaputadotcom has several versions of the ispilla, papilla (modifiers, basically) and the user must manually decide which looks “prettier” with a certain character. Never used Fontographer, so I don’t know if it’s possible to setup rules like “if char = “r” then use “appropriate ispilla” if not use “the other generic thing”. That’s the only solution I can see to prettify modifiers. That would also work for reordering kombuva + char, if you’re interested. I’m referring to what Morquendi observed by the way. I’m pretty sure Robotype could do the same thing, pretty much.

This is just 0.1, it needs heavy revision.

Yes, I know. That’s cool. Sorry, I didn’t intend to sound accusing or “omg. it sucks”. It was just a bug report of sorts + beta testing. That’s about all I have time for, so I test out various things when I goof off and take a break from work.

Incidentally, a Machead friend of mine (I feel unclean for admitting I know people who use Macs ;) raves over Xenotype. Not free, but tis phonetic. Even Kaputa is sorta kinda phonetic (in that they try to map the Roman char to the appropriate char or phoneme in Sinhala as far as possible).

as to the revision, it requires all the bug reports possible, so thanks. I’ve been looking around, but what is ALT-Gr? I’ve been holding ALT and growling, but doesn’t do anything.

Might I suggest steering clear of punctuation where possible ?

Good idea. Will try and find another place to stick the flag. I was thinking ` at one point. Open to suggestions, on anything actually.

I’ve been looking around, but what is ALT-Gr? I’ve been holding ALT and growling, but doesn’t do anything

I think your growly tone needs more work then :)

Calvin: “I’ve heard that big cats do not purr.”
Hobbes: “That’s true. We are too wild and furious. We never purr.”
Calvin: “And how do you call the noise you make when one rubs your tummy?”
Hobbes: “Growling in a friendly way.”

But on a serious err.. note, someone else asked that too. Alt-Gr is the right hand side Alt key. Usually found in Euro (and UK) keyboards. I only use it when I play Quake/Doom, so err.. it doesn’t get much use.

Use the whole upper row keys for little thingys like the flag…@$ and things like that are not going to be essential for Sinhala.

Hi Guys,
I was away for a while.I will try this as soon as I get a chance.The key is to get several people to blog using the same standard.
Chandare

Use the whole upper row keys for little thingys like the flag…@$ and things like that are not going to be essential for Sinhala.

Mage email eka thimal@gedara.com ? Mekata mama $50′k gewwa ? :) I’m not trying to be difficult, but I think some of those shit-number combos are more important than others. This is, after all, going to be used more by bloggers.. so @ would probably be more important than in print. The backtick (`) sounds rather better.

One does require the hal (pronounced “hull”, I think)/virama (as I believe the flag thingie is called) fairly often, so making it easily accessible might be a good idea, usability wise. In fact, everyone who has participated in this discussion thus far (except Chanuka) requires the hal to write their name :) Shift-Alt-L ? (a sort of play on the name for the modifier, hal) Alt-Z (completely unrelated, but at least it’s quick to get to). I dunno. One of those.

Bah. WP put a nice mailto on a fake address :) thimal AT gedara does not work, it’s not a valid address :) and even worse …

ome of those shit-number combos

I blame Freud. I meant shift-number combos :) Darn typos.

Sorry we had a ******* powercut and I was ****** Long live the Electricity board.

I was not talking about a certain class of trained typists. I was talking about people aho are currently involved in writing with the existing format. That includes -
All the newspapers+typists
Publishing firms
Writers who are willing to swtich to PCs from aold fasion typewrites.
Most Writers using PCs
If you sat you are going to help “some” bloggers that means most of your bloggers are likely to come outside the following sectors. It is ok to use it for “domestic purposes but in the www there should be a standard. I mean if blogging in Sinhala is going to be available therer should be an opportunity tfor existing media to assimilate the techniques. Like BBC, Guardian weekly, Observer etc,. – They run blogs…
What if the existing writers, SLRC, Swarnawahini, Lankadeepa(Pls don’t get carried away with the examples), of most of the reporters are given the chance to start blogging in Sinhala with some other keyboard? They will have to retype or hire new typists to convers their texts to this format. All of them are using Wijesekera layout.
You don’t need to buy most of the fonts designed for Wijesekera key board. You can download fonts compatible with the Wijeseketra for free. And it is easy to learn. I started using the computer for prepare my articles in Sinhala even before I was able to use the English keyboard. I’m not talking about trained typists. I am talking about peeople who use computers for such purposes.
I have one question IF we are going to introduce a font, shouldn’t we consider what is really going on in the filed at the moment? I mean we can not superipmose something alien on writers, and institutions that are currently working with Wijesekera layout If we do that will exclude them from the Sinhala blogsphere. I have no arguement against it if you say it is only for the convenience of cirtain group of people. But is is practically -extremely- difficult to “owerthrow” Wijesekera keyboard because it is used everywhere. If you exlude the existing system you might lose prbably the best CONTENT for Sinhala blogs could get in the begining.
I fully support your effort to explore the possibilities of blogging in Sinhala. But as Chandare says “The key is to get several people to blog using the same standard.”

[...] (0.2) Vowel and Stop Keymap (0.2) For more general info and discussion check Sinhala Font 0.1 Sinhala Blogging 0.0 This is an update to the Sinhala Font. Changed the name to e [...]

[...] ut software. jnTa vimuk’Ti eprmueÑ’ viera’Dy Referring to what Thimal says about freeing up normal punctuation is right. I’ve mapped the flag to th [...]

Lohan: One thing that confuses me about Sri Lankans is that they’ll defend the Status Quo at all costs. On Education, Power, whatever. If a Sri Lankan has one piece of pie they’ll come up with all sorts of objections to making the pie any bigger. ‘But what about this slice we have? Let’s just slice it thinner!’ Right now there are 0 Sinhala blog entries (besides Chandare’s first). I’d like to push that to 2 or 3, maybe more.

My first thought was to use an existing standard, but no Sri Lankan blogger is going to buy a Wijesekera keyboard and carry it from home to work to cybercafe to abroad, etc. Since the standard is confusing, I won’t follow it. I just want a simple font where I can press ‘t’ and get a ‘tuh’ sound, press ‘i’ and get an ‘i’ sound, etc. It didn’t exist so I made it.

I am not the ICTA or the government and nobody has to use this thing. It’s a free market and people can adopt or not adopt whatever they want. If you like the status quo then don’t download the font.

Everybody Else: I do think it may be better to keep the top keys. As you can see from the keymap, there’s a lot of room on q, x, and z which can be used. I’m going to incorporate the comments people gave and revise tonight. Some of the characters are plain wrong.

Look, I allready downloaded the font and trying it out. Don’t be that harsh. I was just making some points with the intention of making the discussion more realistic. You don’t have to “carry” a key board pal. I wasn’t talking about such a thing. No one is carring the wijesekera keyboard to the place they work. If you don’t accept my idea that’s allright. I am one of the first few paople who tried to start blogging in Sinhala and I appreciate your efforts as well. You seem to have the tchno – knowledge better than most people.

But it seems that you are ignoring my whole arguement. I WAS trying to “make the pie bigger”!

Please read my comments before making such accusations. Can you interpret it as “making the pie thinner when I sugest some thing that will help to assimilate the existing writers, newspapers, TVs, people who use computers to write in Sinhala into the Sinhala blogsphere. Do you suggest the existing practitioners to UNLEARN the the get into a new keyboard layout for the sake of a group of people who are still learning to type? Will it make a big difference to the number of people who start blogging?
Please read my comment before making such ourrageouse comments. I am interested in what you are doing Indi. I was making a constructive criticism. Wish you all the best. Wish I could meet you.

Lohan and Indi,
I cannot wait to get back home to try out the font.Will try something tonight.Please don’t take anything personal.Keep the fighting mode for later use.For Sinhala blogging to catch on ,a good flaming war and a good sex scandal is needed.Let’s try to get something workable first.
Indi is correct when he mentions a class of typists.Most writers in Sinhala don’t type themselves.They write long hand and then get it typed.Most of them(journalists) know English (atleast the alphabet),so this might interest them as well.The problem is that nobody is willing to take the first step.
I found this article when I went through sunday papers.
http://www.lakbimanet.com/archives/last_08_05_05/index.htm.

The article was about Cultural minister taking steps control the Sinhala language in media.They are going to release a booklet or something also! ;–)) .

Thanks Chandare, I got angry and I had to go and drink(lot of water). Indi, I love you…
Well cultural ministry must be heading towards something similar to their project of removing film cutouts! I really hope that they are not trying to take us back to Dambadeniya Period Sinhala.

Thanks Thimal. That must be it. And I recently got a new computer. So I guess all the major Indian languages are included in it… well in Internet Explorer maybe.

I’m just wondering isn’t there somekind of script which you can put into html pages so that the user doesn’t have to download the font but it just appears for them when they visit the page. I read about it somewhere :)

Use Sinhala unicode. Or better yet, create a font with a phonetical keyboard map for Sinhala unicode.

http://www.esrilanka.lk/Sinhala

http://www.fonts.lk

Unicode is the international standard for Sinhala (and other non-Latin scripts). It’s the only practical solution for creating universally usable Sinhala software and websites. You can even search on Yahoo in Sinhala.

Kaputa fonts has a long history in Sri Lankan ICT .. Kaputa evolved from Matara, Matara evolved from Kandy New which evolved from Kandy the Age of the Tetrapod – There was a bare land on Windows , No Sinhala TTF but in apple exsist a font set ..

Now Its Unicode Time — Kaputa has a Unicode Version and 2004 Ascii Version
http://www.info.lk/slword

The fun thing is even today Kandy, Kandy New, Kaputa, kaputa 2000 still used by users …
They will work in windows untill windows support ttf

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