Ethiopic/Ge'ez Script Deadkeys on Ukelele

[Mamush TM]

Hi all, 

I've learned a lot from this group, thanks to y'all, but one thing that I'm still having trouble with is understanding the dead keys, such as figuring out how to make it so that for example:

Pressing double “ee” after “h” produces ሄ (instead of pressing h then "ie" or shift + E for ሄ, if that makes sense).

Does anyone know if that's easily editable on a current layout or one would have to start from scratch? Thank you for your help. This group has been super helpful, I've learned a lot, and I really appreciate it!

[Gé van Gasteren]

On Wed, Dec 8, 2021 at 3:12 AM Mamush TM <temari...@gmail.com> wrote:

Pressing double “ee” after “h” produces ሄ (instead of pressing h then "ie" or shift + E for ሄ, if that makes sense).
Does anyone know if that's easily editable on a current layout or one would have to start from scratch?

 

This "double ee" you mention, is that typed with one keystroke?

And what about the "ie" ?

Dead keys are a concept you can best get familiar with by experimenting on a scratch layout while going through section 6.7 in the manual, and I mean step by step.

Dead keys are called like that because they don’t produce any screen output by themselves: they delay the output by one keystroke.

Taking your situation as an example:

If h is a dead key character, pressing it activates the "dead key state" that is associated with it.

Then the key pressed after it can do two things:

1. if that key is defined as a normal key, it’ll produce output;

2. if that key is a dead key character too, it’ll activate another "dead key state", and you’ll have to type a third key before output is shown.

Ukelele can convert normal keys into dead keys and vice versa, and lets you create and edit dead key states too, so in principle all is possible, even if those "double ee" and "ie" are not typed with one keystroke currently. But it’ll make things much more complicated.

Could you attach the keyboard layout you’re working on? I’m rather in the dark as to your situation, and my whole questioning may be wrong.

In fact, it’ll probably be much easier for me to quickly make the desired change than trying to talk you out of a situation I don’t understand.

[Sorin Paliga]

It is ALWAYS recommended to start from an existing keylayout as the effort implied in the subsequent development is significantly reduced. The philosophy of a dead key is the one once implemented in typewriters: a dead key did not move the mechanism on step forward, it remained in the same place so the diacritical mark could be written on any letter. In IT era the principle is the same. You have 2 options: a. to instruct the word processor to use predefined chars, many of them were implemented at the beginning of Unicode, e.g. é ó ř ď đ ł etc. etc. b. To use CDM (combining diacritical marks) in order to place a diacritical above/below any char, including the ones under #a, but one may get ŏ̱ ọ̄ etc.. 

You have to practice a little bit, but perhaps read the manual first.

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[Mamush TM]

Thank you Gévan and Cattus, for your responses. Sorry for the late response tho. For some reason my gmail didn’t notify me of your replies and I’m respond on my phone’s Safari now. 

@Gévan, by the “ee” and “ie” I meant they pressed separately to change Ethiopic Syllables.

[Mamush TM]

Sorry I was in a rush and my last response was horrible. Responding on my phone’s Safari now still as I’m away from my laptop. 

@Gévan, by the “ee” and “ie” I meant like they are pressed separately (different keystrokes) to change the Ethiopic Syllables. For example, some keyboard layouts with Ethiopia scripts produce ሄ when “i and e” are pressed after the letter “h” while other layouts produce ሄ with “h” followed by pressing the shift + E keys, if that makes more sense now. 

[Gé van Gasteren]

All right. The second method (h followed by Shift+E) is a normal case for dead key sequences, so if you’re happy with that method, the good news is that it’s easy.

But with "ee" and "ie", it’s doubtful whether they can work. This depends on which keypress sequences are meaningful in the script:

• If h followed by e should produce certain output, but h followed by e followed by e should produce different output, this can’t be done with dead keys.

The problem is that for the first sequence (h, e) to produce output, this e must be a normal key, and for the second sequence (h, e, e) to work, it (the first e after the h) must be a dead key.

And obviously, it can’t be both at the same time.

Still, if anyone can upload the Amharic keyboard here – either the one Mamush TM had received from Tom or John, or (a copy of) the one currently coming with Monterey, I’d be interested to see them.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ukelele-users/fa6a6680-fdd6-492c-a943-ab4c685be286n%40googlegroups.com.

[Mamush TM]

Thank you for that in-depth explanation, Gévan! 

Here's a copy of the Ge'ez Keyboard (that came with Monterey) if I attached it correctly. In the case of our example, h followed by i and e (h,i,e sequence) is used to form the ሄ syllable. Thanks so much, again!

[Gé van Gasteren]

On Thu, Dec 9, 2021 at 2:39 AM Mamush TM <temari...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's a copy of the Ge'ez Keyboard (that came with Monterey) if I attached it correctly. In the case of our example, h followed by i and e (h,i,e sequence) is used to form the ሄ syllable.

Thank you for the upload!

Indeed, this keyboard layout is chock-full of dead keys and nested dead keys!

Frankly, if you’re just beginning with Ukelele, I think this is too complex.

But in principle it is possible to change the sequences, e.g. for ሄ, from  h i e  into  h e e.

The steps:

Note down which dead key state is connected with the i after h;

Change that i after h into a normal character;

Change the e after h into a dead key;

Assign the noted-down dead key state to the new dead key e after h.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is: these steps have to be repeated for every letter, that’s about 35 times …

It’s much quicker to add a sequence like h E (that’s h followed by shift-e) for ሄ because there’s no need to change any dead key states around.

[Mamush TM]

Thank you so much for taking the time to look into it and sharing this much-simplified step, Gé van! I'll definitely try that!

Do you mind sharing the steps on how to change the current dead key to the Shift + E method as well? Thank you so much!

[Gé van Gasteren]

On Thu, Dec 9, 2021 at 5:22 AM Mamush TM <temari...@gmail.com> wrote:

Do you mind sharing the steps on how to change the current dead key to the Shift + E method as well?

 

Actually, the second step of that more complicated procedure I gave you can be left out:

One can leave the h i e typing method untouched and just add an additional one. So, updated:

For ሄ, duplicating  h i e  into  h e e takes 3 steps:

Note down which dead key state is connected with the i after h;

Change the e after h into a dead key;

Assign the noted-down dead key state to the new dead key e after h.

For assigning ሄ to the sequence  h E:

Right-click h, choose "Enter dead key state".

Hold down Shift while double-clicking the E key, paste in ሄ, click the Done button.

Click the "Leave" icon in the toolbar.

Repeat for all the other letters, pasting in the appropriate characters.

If you don’t understand what’s happening when you follow those steps, please don’t proceed blindly, but read up in the manual.

Or better: create a new keyboard layout just for experiments and try creating and editing dead keys there, until you feel you know what you’re doing :)

[Mamush TM]

Great! Thank you so very much!

[Gé van Gasteren]

Update: after some more (direct) correspondence, this user Mamush wrote the following, which I copy here to nicely complete the thread:

For beginner like me, I didn’t quite understand the steps for the h,e,e sequence at first, but the way you wrote out the 2nd method (h + shift E) was easier to understand, and practicing that helped me to have a better understanding of what’s meant by entering and leaving “dead key states.” Then it all made more sense after that and I can now create a layout from scratch with whichever method.