typing in Burmese script

[Haruo]

အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေယ အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေ အ့အေ အ့န ူသမိ ့​ျေ ာ​ေိနယ အ့အေ အ့န
ူသမိ ့​ျေ ာ​ေိန
ူနအ ကျ မနြသငခနယ ူနအ ကျ မနြသငခန ညေိ ဘန ါူ​ေိ ငည ငအယ ညေိ ဘန ါူ​ေိ ငည ငအ

Now, I know that that is gibberish, but at least it's the right
alphabet. The problem is that while I can get my Tavultesoft Keyman
Burmese keyboard to work in Google Groups, and to some extent in
Facebook, I'm completely unable to get it to function usefully in
OpenOffice Swriter, which is hampering my efforts to really use it,
e.g. to try to transcribe stuff from the 1063 hymnal. Any suggestions
on a better (free) way to get my computer to use this alphabet would
be most welcome.

Leland aka Haruo

[Haruo]

Actually it's not exactly—it's what happens when I turn the
Tavultesoft on and type "this is the day, this is the day that the
lord has made, that the lord has made
let us rejoice, let us rejoice and be glad in it, and be glad in it"
give or take a typo or two...

On Nov 8, 5:49 pm, Haruo <rosha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေယ အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေ အ့အေ အ့န ူသမိ ့​ျေ ာ​ေိနယ အ့အေ အ့န
> ူသမိ ့​ျေ ာ​ေိန
> ူနအ ကျ မနြသငခနယ ူနအ ကျ မနြသငခန ညေိ ဘန ါူ​ေိ ငည ငအယ ညေိ ဘန ါူ​ေိ ငည ငအ
>
> Now, I know that that is gibberish,

> Leland aka Haruo

[Haruo]

That last post was supposed to say "Actually it's not exactly
<i>gibberish</i>—..."

And welcome our first non-me member, Marc @ Tavultesoft! Maybe by the
time others join there will be useful information here for those
wanting to type Burmese script in OpenOffice as well as on the
Internet...

Leland aka Haruo

On Nov 8, 5:51 pm, Haruo <rosha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually it's not exactly—it's what happens when I turn the
> Tavultesoft on and type "this is the day, this is the day that the
> lord has made, that the lord has made
> let us rejoice, let us rejoice and be glad in it, and be glad in it"
> give or take a typo or two...
>
> On Nov 8, 5:49 pm, Haruo <rosha...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> > အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေယ အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န …

[Tavultesoft]

I've got a couple of questions for you:

1. Which versions of Keyman, OpenOffice and Windows are you running?
2. When you try to type Burmese in OpenOffice, what output do you
get? Burmese (but wrong), English, or nothing?
3. Which Burmese keyboard are you using? (There is a bunch of
complexity around Burmese and Unicode)

Marc

[Ros’ Haruo]

Well, so far I haven't tried typing Burmese. My main goal is to be able to type Sgaw Karen, but my command of it is still not good enough to describe as rudimentary. You can see the output I got just below your message in the "Show quoted text" text below. That is not Burmese or Karen, it's English typed with the MyWin2.2.4 Unicode 5.1 keyboard turned on. It's the Les Garrett (Australian!) lyrics

"this is the day, this is the day that the lord has made, that the lord has made
let us rejoice, let us rejoice and be glad in it"

If I turn on the Burmese keyboard and type "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" it looks like this: "ဤ့န ဆကငခု ဘမသတည ်သထ ြကာစနိ သလနမ အ့န ူဖေပ ိသါ". I don't know enough Karen to really use it for that yet; I'm still learning the alphabet. I do know the numerals ၁၂၃၄၅၆၇၈၉၀ well enough, but the letters and vowels and tone marks are still in the early stages of apprehension ;-)
Windows is XE, I don't think there's a problem with that or else it wouldn't work in Google (opened in Firefox). But as for OpenOffice, the version is 3.0 and I get very little output at all; mostly just blanks or boxes; it keeps forcing me to use Tahoma, and then if I highlight the Tahoma and change the font to Burmese the boxes mostly disappear and a few Burmese characters appear, but mostly just blank spaces. I attach a QWERTY sheet I was trying to compile, which is what first alerted me to the problem.

Leland aka Haruo

PS I'll put that sheet in the group's Files section so others can access it readily.

[Tavultesoft]

OK, we'll try a couple of things with OpenOffice and Burmese script
here shortly to better understand the problem and let you know what we
discover.

You'll also find that Burmese script (whether for Burmese or Sgaw
Karen) has a poor level of support in general in Windows XP.
Applications will display the Burmese characters, but they will not be
shaped correctly. You will need to update your version of Uniscribe
for the complex character shapes (e.g. vowels) to display correctly.
Keyman Desktop 7.1 provides a utility to do this automatically -- the
Keyman Uniscribe Manager. This functionality is not available in
earlier versions of Keyman.

Marc

> On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 11:15 AM, Tavultesoft <tavultes...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've got a couple of questions for you:
>
> > 1. Which versions of Keyman, OpenOffice and Windows are you running?
> > 2. When you try to type Burmese in OpenOffice, what output do you
> > get?  Burmese (but wrong), English, or nothing?
> > 3. Which Burmese keyboard are you using?  (There is a bunch of
> > complexity around Burmese and Unicode)
>
> > Marc
>
> > On Nov 9, 12:49 pm, Haruo <rosha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေယ အ့ငျ ငျ အ့န ိပေ အ့အေ အ့န ူသမိ ့​ျေ ာ​ေိနယ အ့အေ အ့န
> > > ူသမိ ့​ျေ ာ​ေိန
> > > ူနအ ကျ မနြသငခနယ ူနအ ကျ မနြသငခန ညေိ ဘန ါူ​ေိ ငည ငအယ ညေိ ဘန ါူ​ေိ ငည ငအ
>
> > > Now, I know that that is gibberish, but at least it's the right
> > > alphabet. The problem is that while I can get my Tavultesoft Keyman
> > > Burmese keyboard to work in Google Groups, and to some extent in
> > > Facebook, I'm completely unable to get it to function usefully in
> > > OpenOffice Swriter, which is hampering my efforts to really use it,
> > > e.g. to try to transcribe stuff from the 1063 hymnal. Any suggestions
> > > on a better (free) way to get my computer to use this alphabet would
> > > be most welcome.
>
> > > Leland aka Haruo
>
>
>

>  qwerty-template.odt
> 13KViewDownload

[Ros’ Haruo]

Thanks! Heck, even Devanagari often doesn't display properly!

[KenJ]

Would a virtual Myanmar keyboard help?

http://mister-kwai.com/myanmar/


KenJ

On Nov 9, 4:30 pm, Ros’ Haruo <rosha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks! Heck, even Devanagari often doesn't display properly!
>

[Ros’ Haruo]

I don't know. I'll give it a try, I'm open to all suggestions, especially the ones that are free, but I have a feeling I may actually have to buy something to get really good results. And until our current home-buying operation is successfully concluded, I don't have any disposable funds for such stuff. In the meantime, much planning and fruitful discussion can be done without Burmese script. I would love it if there were folks in this group discussing in Karen, but even with appropriate software my command of the language isn't such as to enable me to join in such discussions.

Leland aka Haruo

[Tavultesoft]

We've also got a free Burmese web keyboard online at http://www.keymanweb.com/
We're still working on the OpenOffice / Burmese issue here, there's a
bit of setup involved on our part to get a test computer ready with
Windows XP and OpenOffice...

Marc

On Nov 10, 8:31 pm, Ros’ Haruo <rosha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know. I'll give it a try, I'm open to all suggestions, especially
> the ones that are free, but I have a feeling I may actually have to buy
> something to get really good results. And until our current home-buying
> operation is successfully concluded, I don't have any disposable funds for
> such stuff. In the meantime, much planning and fruitful discussion can be
> done without Burmese script. I would love it if there were folks in this

> group discussing *in* Karen, but even with appropriate software my command

> of the language isn't such as to enable me to join in such discussions.
>
> Leland aka Haruo
>

[Ros’ Haruo]

Thanks, Marc. I appreciate your efforts.

[Haruo]

Ken,

I have Windows XP, and I use Firefox. I generally try to avoid
Microsoft stuff when I can (it's only inertia that keeps me on Windows
itself), and I am pro-Open Source stuff. It appears that to use the
mister-kwai stuff I have to have at least Windows 2000 and must be
running Internet Explorer etc. etc. My impression is that I should get
closer to my goal with the Tavultesoft programs, though with XP the
results may still not be what I need to achieve.

Leland

[Tavulteguy]

Thank you for your post and for your kind patience.

We have tested the problem you describe with Burmese in OpenOffice and
experience the same. I'm sure you will by now have noted that
OpenOffice at the outset does not accept Burmese text pasted into the
document from an external source. This indicates that there is at
least a cursory OpenOffice issue with Burmese support.

Searching for OpenOffice with Burmese, we came across this resource:
http://my.openoffice.org/

Have you attempted those instructions?

If you've tried them and you still experience the problem you
describe, please let us know. As far as it is dependent on Keyman, we
would like to help you find a resolution to this issue.