Where can I find the zwj on the Keyman Sinhala Sipon keyboard?
Welcome to this forum! We don’t have the source for that keyboard as it is an older keyboard. I decompiled it and it doesn’t look like there is any one key that outputs ZWJ (U+200D).
It looks to me like when you type various combinations plus a vowel (aeiou - lowercase) then it outputs ZWJ.
For example, any consonant, plus U+0DCA + U+0DBA U+0DCA plus the “a” key outputs the consonant + U+0DCA + U+200D + U+0DBA
Hope this helps.
Hello Lorna, thank you for the speedy response. I am aware of your example in using the Sipon keyboard and for the majority of combinations the zwj is automatically applied. However, I am trying to produce the combined characters below which are not pre-defined on the keyboard and are produced in other inputs (MS, Mac etc) with the use of a zwj on a key. Some examples are:
ක්ව කව් ක්වි ක්වී ක්වු ක්වූ ක්ෂ ක්ෂ් ක්ෂි ක්ෂී ක්ෂු ක්ෂූ
ඣ් ඣි ඣී ඣු ඣූ ඣ්ර ඣ්ර් ඣ්රි ඣ්රී
න්ද න්ද න්දා න්දි න්දී න්දු න්දූ න්ද්ර න්ද්රි න්ද්රී
න්ධ න්ධි න්ධී න්ධු
Any light you can shed on this would be very useful. Regards Theresa
I’m not seeing those as possibilities on this particular keyboard. Have you tried any other Sinhala keyboards? I’m in the process of updating the two Sinhala keyboards we have imported from Windows.
I’m not sure when they will be approved, but the old versions are available. Unfortunately the documentation is unavailable on the old version:
https://keyman.com/keyboards/kbdsw09 ZWJ is on RALT+J
https://keyman.com/keyboards/kbdsn1 ZWJ is on \
I think you can probably turn on the On screen keyboard to see the key assignments.
Thanks Lorna.
I have no issue with the Microsoft or Mac keyboards in producing these combined characters but have not yet been able to produce them on the Sipon input. Our
users are unable to type with the MS layouts as they are only familiar with phonetic inputting hence they will be using Keyman Sipon on Windows 10 as this is the closest to the Google Input they are used to. I have already looked at the Onscreen keyboard
but nothing was shown as being a zwj or zwnj.
Many thanks for the very quick replies anyway.
Regards.
Theresa
Given the license of the keyboard is explicitly GPL (https://keyman.com/keyboards/sipon%20phonetic%20sinhala) it should be fine to decompile and update the keyboard to add a zwj / zwnj key. Keyman Developer 13 includes the ‘kmdecomp’ decompiler command line tool, which you can use to accomplish this (or sounds like Lorna has decompiled it already). The author’s email address is also in the above web page, so you might be able to get an update from them.
Hi Marc, thanks for responding.
I did contact the developer last year sometime but had no joy. I’ll take a look at KD 13 and see where I get, I just wondered why it wasn’t designated on a
key or if it was where it was - I’m not sure yet how big a problem it poses, if at all.
Theresa.
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Hi Theresa,
Just saying, a quick workaround would be: in order to type ක්ව <ka, virama, ZWJ, va>, first type “k, y, a” to produce ක්ය <ka, virama, ZWJ, ya>, then backspace to remove the “ya”, then type “v, a” (or “v” and a whatever following vowel).
Also, as the Sinhala encoding model essentially encapsulates ZWJ with the virama into the general conjoiner <virama, ZWJ> and the touching-conjunct conjoiner <ZWJ, virama>, instead of having a dedicated keycap, many well designed Sinhala keyboard layouts (not this one, apparently) expose and only expose <virama, ZWJ> and <ZWJ, virama> on keycaps. That should be a best practice to follow for any update to this keyboard layout as well.
Hello Liang
Many thanks for the infirmation I shall try this method out.
Regards.
Theresa.