http://bit.ly/2cCJjXH

1. Appearance: Keyboards seem simple

2. Reality: Significant complexity in input of many writing systems

3. Support: Each platform has its own keyboard description format

   • Differing technical capabilities

   • Wide variance in layouts, breadth of language support

4. Standards: LDML has keyboard description.

   • Descriptive. Not implementable

5. No broadly recognised open repository of keyboards

Where are we today?

1. Extension of LDML standard to support definition of keyboard layouts for majority of languages: Keyboard Definition Language (KDL)

2. Development of open source reference input method framework (Keyman) based on existing Keyman code, that consumes KDL

3. Refresh Keyman’s current repository of keyboards to support KDL layouts

4. Extension of existing Keyman Developer (KMDEV) keyboard development tools to support KDL

The opportunity

 

Given these four components:

 

KDL   +   Keyman   +   Repository    +   KMDEV    =

 

We get:

 

⇒ An open, mature, vigorous, platform-independent keyboarding solution

⇒ Impetus for advocacy with platform vendors in order to achieve broad adoption

 

 

The goal

• All language communities empowered to create content on any platform

• New platforms can support all languages from release day 1

• Elimination of 10+ year ramp up of support that we have seen historically for all new platforms

• Keyboards cease to be a limiting factor for language support

• Fewer incompatible solutions

• Resources freed up to focus on new input paradigms, other languages

Outcomes

• Already covers all major platforms
• Already has existing layouts for over 1,000 languages
  • Developed by a wide community of users
• Already has mature, sophisticated keyboard layout development tools
• Code base is stable and widely used​
  • Immediate community buy-in
• ​​No legal or technical roadblocks to open sourcing the code
  • SIL owns 100% of the code base

Why choose to leverage Keyman?