Sunday, March 21, 2010

Workshop Outcomes

In spite of my optimism in the last posting, there are no new Dene Unicode downloads to announce yet. The Workshop participants drew to our attention some important changes that required revisions in keyboard layouts and encoding.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 will let us realize our dream of using system fonts like Times New Roman and Arial to type Dene Languages in word procesors, email, and instant messaging - as long as the recipient is using the same operating system. Windows XP fonts do not have all the characters needed. I don't have data on Mac system fonts yet. Even under Vista, several programs, including Power Point 2007 and Movie Maker, misplace or lose diacritics. Apparently they do not support Open Type, the engine which assures proper positioning of tone and nasal markers with Unicode fonts.

What should you do? Try out Unicode as soon as Dene language keyboards become available. They will be free. Legacy WinMac Dene Fonts are completely unreadable if sender and receiver do not both have the fonts installed. At the worst, Unicode incompatibility is moderately annoying.

We plan to have a table at the Minister's Aboriginal Languages Symposium in Yellowknife March 30 to April 1 with (I hope) the latest keyboards and information available to the public.

In the meantime, check out these websites from Mike West.
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/alphabet/
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/tendi/
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/literacy/

And here's a web keyboard to try.
You can type in several Dene Languages without installing a special keyboard on your computer.
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/literacy/resources.aspx

Click the language name to display a visual keyboard image. It will show you which keys to use to type special Dene Language characters. This is very useful when using someone else's machine where you cannot install a keyboard program. Type here, then copy and paste your text wherever you need it.

I believe Mike is planning to add a WinMac-style Unicode keyboard for those users who have trained themselves to touch type on that system.