Keyboard mapping a font?

[Gare]

Great, the long reply I just typed you vanished into the ether. So here's a shorter version. Will sound abrupt but don't mean to, just a bit fed up!

Only within an application, such as Xara, WordPerfect, and a few others, stagger, do I know that you can create macros to "build" or access a specific character via a predetermined key combo.

What I think your client wants is something that MS Word does as a macro. For example, I have word set up that I press F3 to turn my last typed "code characters" into a phrase, an automatic replacement, if you will. If I knew your client was using MS Word, it'd be fairly easy for me to write some macros to automatically fetch a symbol when he presses any of the function keys.

I'm thinking in order for you to cut to the chase, get a roll of white duct tape and a laundry marker, and mark up a $25 Logitech wireless keyboard, like the MK 310. Then, swapping keyboards from your specially marked up one to a normal one would take 2 seconds.

Alt, Ctrl, and Shift are somewhat reserved keys in Windows for modifying an action.

What you need is serious remapping of a keyboard, and because I'm ignorant of this sport, I'd go with the tape and a pen.

Sorry!

My Best,

Gary

[mwenz]

As Gary wrote, it depends on the application. I suppose one could place whole words into positions reserved for ligatures, still takes a key combination to activate them and it fully is dependent upon applications that can use Open Type features.

Another possibility is if the application can utilize character styles is to swap the font for the desired words/characters.

As most businesses have Word or another application that can utilize macros, that is the cleanest means of accomplishing the task, though. It would help if we all actually knew how many squiggles were needed and what they accomplish.

Take care, Mike

[Soquili]

Staggers there is no reference for things like Alt-f, or any other Alt + character because they are special use key combinations. If they were not intercepted by Windows they would actually map to existing characters.

As an example the Alt-F combination is the Exclamation Mark character.

As Mike pointed out, if we knew more about what you are trying to achieve we may be able to point out workarounds for you.

[staggers]

As Gary wrote, it depends on the application. I suppose one could place whole words into positions reserved for ligatures, still takes a key combination to activate them and it fully is dependent upon applications that can use Open Type features.

Another possibility is if the application can utilize character styles is to swap the font for the desired words/characters.

As most businesses have Word or another application that can utilize macros, that is the cleanest means of accomplishing the task, though. It would help if we all actually knew how many squiggles were needed and what they accomplish.

Take care, Mike

I'm afraid the customer doesn't realize the enormity of what's being asked! It's intended to be a new alphabet, to simplify spelling, and the squiggles are all extra U/case and L/Case vowel sounds, and one or two other things. Some of them are modified versions of existing ones. Others have never existed before. So the intention is that there's all the normal stuff on the keyboard, and this extra stuff, and it must all be reachable in as few strokes as possible, and as logically as possible. So the intention is tha it can be used anywhere.

I'm starting to think ' create the font, complete with all the extra stuff, then actually write a keyboard driver specially for it.'

And I want my mummy.

Staggers

[Soquili]

You would actually need a comletely new Operating system. Windows, Linux, OS-X, and Unix all have special uses for many key combinations which make them unusable for a font.

[mwenz]

I think you will need to do an OpenType font. (1) the shear number of mappings you can do. (2) you can place characters that will become combined with lower register characters into what we would consider diacriticals and the like. The customer will need to use that font as a paragraph style but the applications such as Word, InDesign and PagePlus will do the combinations for you.

This will be a labor of love. You will need to have printouts for the mappings so they know what to type and a key press for the application(s) to add "marks" or to combine characters.

I believe this will be outside what TT can accomplish by itself. I could be wrong. It can be done with TT and MS' tool (free) to add the OTF features, and of course FontLab can handle it all.

Good luck.

Mike

[Gare]

It's intended to be a new alphabet, to simplify spelling

Then it follows that you cannot use a standard QWERTY keyboard based on Latin ISO standards for alpha-numeric glyphs, to express a non-standard alphabet.

I'm trying to be helpful here, honest, Staggers. The request from your client entails a much larger system than a font. All Latin fonts are the same, when you get right down to communications. The only difference between Helvetica and Times Roman is the appearance of the symbol, but not what the symbol means.

Big difference. As Bill mentions, you need a new system to support a new manner of spelling. And if your client could live with a closed system, I'd still recommend that you build them this font, and then sticker over a standard 104 keyboard, having mapped the glyphs in the font to standard ISO Latin characters.

It's cheap...

-g-

[mwenz]

http://www.synctronics.com/custom-ke...-products.html

Could not a custom keyboard combined with Unicode / OTF, a pad with a custom mapping overlay solve the issue?

Using standard keyboards but with both overlays and printouts of key combinations has served organizations such as Wycliffe and the UBS for, well, since personal computer use for translating the Bible into print for new alphabets. A custom keyboard seems to be a big step forward on the same issue.

Take care, Mike

[Soquili]

Mike you would still need to bypass all the special key code combinations which is what Staggers says the client does not accept.

The client does not want to use Alt+0188 to access a glyph that replaces the existing ¼ glyph.

The client wants to be able to use Alt+f or Alt+F to access new glyphs, but Windows and all other existing Operating Systems reconize this as special combinations to trigger special operations. Even if the OS did not do this you would get ! unless you replace that glyph for all instances of keyboard code 33.

[mwenz]

Bill, no, not really. The link I provided is to a company that would be glad to make someone a custom keyboard. Want 400 glyphs, get a 400 key keyboard. All it would do is to map to the unicode character designation. Which would make it a single keypress. And if not that company, there's gotta be one that would. Google threw out a lot of hits which is where AI found that company.

I find it wholly unreasonable to do this, but it isn't my dollars. The Chinese experimented with novel keyboards. One such one can be found in this article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese..._for_computers

While there are alternately laid-out keyboards for work in China, I think most DTP people I have read about use fairly standard looking keyboards and deal with what the OP doesn't want to--which brings me back to the custom keyboard link I posted.

Take care, Mike