Workshop Outcomes

In spite of my optimism in the last posting, there are no new Dene Unicode downloads to announce yet. The Workshop participants drew to our attention some important changes that required revisions in keyboard layouts and encoding.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 will let us realize our dream of using system fonts like Times New Roman and Arial to type Dene Languages in word procesors, email, and instant messaging - as long as the recipient is using the same operating system. Windows XP fonts do not have all the characters needed. I don't have data on Mac system fonts yet. Even under Vista, several programs, including Power Point 2007 and Movie Maker, misplace or lose diacritics. Apparently they do not support Open Type, the engine which assures proper positioning of tone and nasal markers with Unicode fonts.

What should you do? Try out Unicode as soon as Dene language keyboards become available. They will be free. Legacy WinMac Dene Fonts are completely unreadable if sender and receiver do not both have the fonts installed. At the worst, Unicode incompatibility is moderately annoying.

We plan to have a table at the Minister's Aboriginal Languages Symposium in Yellowknife March 30 to April 1 with (I hope) the latest keyboards and information available to the public.

In the meantime, check out these websites from Mike West.
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/alphabet/
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/tendi/
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/literacy/

And here's a web keyboard to try.
You can type in several Dene Languages without installing a special keyboard on your computer.
http://www.nwtlanguages.ca/literacy/resources.aspx

Click the language name to display a visual keyboard image. It will show you which keys to use to type special Dene Language characters. This is very useful when using someone else's machine where you cannot install a keyboard program. Type here, then copy and paste your text wherever you need it.

I believe Mike is planning to add a WinMac-style Unicode keyboard for those users who have trained themselves to touch type on that system.

Meeting in Progress

The Unicode Dene Font tech team had a productive day in Yellowknife Feb 27. We are identifying work-arounds needed for older operating systems which are not fully compatible. We identified programs which work well with Unicode and some which still have problems. New keyboards, cosmetic improvements to character display, and language specific alphabetical sorting are in the works as a result of input from the guests which came to the first day's workshop. Three more days of workshops and trials remain.

Stay tuned for more developments and an announcement when a download package will be available.

Hopeful progress

Two days ago I began a post "While we wait for word on a funding proposal we are not idle." Before I could publish it I got the word - a portion of the funding was approved. Less than half, but enough that the tech team is planning a face to face meeting to bring together and document all the known glitches in our prototype. We have each been testing the performance in a variety of fonts, applications and operating systems. The permutations are finite, but dauntingly numerous. The unpredictability of how formatted email is received is one of our current challenges. Another challenge is deciding the degree to which we will support older, less Unicode-compliant operating systems and software.

The good news, we just may have a Unicode Dene keyboard ready for beta testing by the end of March. Keep watching. This is one of the places we'll advertise for testers.

Reflection

Thanks to fellow team members who encouraged me to continue this blog. I think I've got comments enabled now. Feel free to ask questions as well - I may not have an answer but it will provoke discussion.

Back in 1994-95 when I struggled through developing the WinMac Dene Fonts, the only resources I had were people I could meet in person or by phone, and printed manuals and catalogs. Trial and error required a lot of sneaker-net and snail-mailing floppy disks to colleagues. I remember getting long distance dial-up in 1996 and discovering the awesome power of email collaboration.

Working with others on Unicode for Dene Languages has already saved me re-inventing the wheel enough times in this last week to equip a Bombardier. What a privilege to be part of this round!

Starting Again

15 years after WinMac DeneFonts, a better system is on the horizon. Two weeks ago I started programming a new keyboard to take advantage of the Unicode fonts.

Did you know it's now possible to compose Dene Language documents in Arial, Times New Roman, and several other fonts? Yes, the versions of those fonts on my Vista machine have all the characters needed. Soon there will be no more need to download fonts just to read and print Dene Language documents. No more "Tåîchô" when you wrote "Tlicho" with all the diacritics.

So I was writing this new keyboard file to type the special characters and could see that it was going to work, when I ran into a snag. I called around to consult with some Dene Language experts and found out there was a group of people who had the same idea at about the same time I did. Now a bunch of us are working together maximize the improvements in the way Dene Languages will be typed, emailed, and displayed on the internet. Most of them know way more than I do. That snag? - solved with one email. But working together as a group of perfectionists we found a lot of other issues to resolve before we have anything to publish.

Stay tuned for updates - we're just getting started.