Many Amharic keyboards not working

Hi,

After finishing some troublesome Windows updates, most of the Amharic keyboards I install do not type Amharic; they simply type in English. The only one that works is gff-ethiopic-7.kmx, even though it is deemed outdated by Keyman. It’s odd that there are so many options to choose from yet only one or few works.

Also, the keyboard shortcuts the configuration offers do not work, or are rather hit-and-miss.

I would appreciate any help.

1 Like

Note: post updated 29 Oct to reference Geez instead of Tigrinya

Hi @Jyob,

Thank you for getting in touch. Just yesterday I noted an issue with an Amharic keyboard on one of my test environments. And I have had another user get in touch via email. So this looks like it may be an issue that has come up recently.

I am now investigating the problem in detail.

I do already know a workaround: configure the Amharic keyboard to be associated with another language other than Amharic. To do this (for Keyman 10):

  1. Open Keyman Configuration.

  2. Expand the Amharic keyboard by clicking on it, and in the Languages box, click [Add language]:

  3. Choose another language that uses the Ethiopic script for best results. Search for “gez-Ethi” and choose Geez (don’t use Tigrinya because it has the same problem!):
    image

  4. Click [OK] to add the language, then point to the “am” or “Amharic” entry in the list and click the (X) button to remove it:

  5. Click [OK] to save the configuration changes.

Dear Marc,

Thank you for your response.

  I tried your workaround but it seems to change to English at random times. Anyway, as this seems to be a general problem for Amharic I sticking to the keyboard I mentioned for now.

Best regards,

Eyob

I have just tested with release 1709 of Windows 10 and can confirm that the issue arises only with a more recent edition. I am currently working through narrowing down when the problem was introduced.

We are looking for a workaround to this issue. In the meantime, we have also reported the root cause to Microsoft, because it stems from a change in Windows 10 1803. Can you upvote our feedback? https://blog.keyman.com/2018/10/how-to-send-feedback-to-microsoft-for-issues-that-impact-keyman/

Please note updated workaround steps above: use Geez language, not Tigrinya, because Tigrinya has the same issue.

We are tracking this as issue #1285 in the Keyman issue tracker.

Hello Marc,

Now it seems Amharic completely doesn’t work with Keyman. No workaround or anything seems to work.

@Jyob, can you send a diagnostic report? We’ve confirmed that the workaround I provided earlier in this discussion works on all systems we’ve tested it on. Note that we are continuing to work on a broader mitigation to the issue as well.

https://help.keyman.com/kb/40 describes how to send a diagnostic report.

Dear Marc,

Sent. It’s been assigned case #1454.

Best regards,

Eyob

Eyob, I’ve responded to your private message.

We’ve just released an update to Keyman 10 that works around the issue. This is currently building and should land on the download servers in an hour or so. If you already have Keyman installed, the update will not make a difference, so you should uninstall and reinstall the Amharic keyboard in order to get the benefit.

https://blog.keyman.com/2018/11/keyman-windows-10-1803-and-amharic-tigrinya-sinhala/ describes the workaround. We hope to be able to roll it back as soon as a more complete fix is found.

Thank you for your support. I noticed that the latest stable version on the website is 10.0.1204.0, but in the link the supposed version with the solution is 10.0.1205.0. Can you check?

The version at https://keyman.com/downloads is now at 10.0.1205.0. The version bundled with keyboards is currently being updated and should be online in about 2 hours.

This conversation has been resolved.