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The Pan-Siouan Keyboard

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Notes on installing Keyman Keyboards

The keyboard included here is meant to include the characters necessary to type all Siouan languages, in their current form. Also, several glyphs have been included which have been used historically to write these languages. With more research and information gratefully received from speakers, I would like to produce individual keyboards for each language. These unique keyboards would allow for a faster touch-typing speed, and freeing up special keys on the Siouan keyboard that are not used by the language. If you would like to participate in helping me program these keyboards, please email me.
This page contains no characters outside the Unicode standard (except for the raised eta). Unless you are using OpenType software, some of the accented characters will not look right. The accents may be poorly placed. See the Download the Keyboard page for more information.
 

Features of the Pan-Siouan keyboard

  • The keyboard makes no changes to the alphabetic keys (a-z). Semicolon (;) and colon (:) have been moved to shift-comma (<) and shift-period (>) respectively.
  • The apostrophe ' has been changed to its curled variety ʼ. By typing two apostrophes ('-') a superscript glottal stop ˀ is accessed
  • Accents are typed first, and then the letter to be accented. There are seven diacritics (accents) on the keyboard.
    Diacritic Access Key(s) Examples
    Acute á [ (left square bracket) [ + s = ś    [ + E = É
    Grave à [[ (two left square brackets) [ + [ + i = ì
    Macron ā _ (underscore) _ + A = Ā    _ + p = p̄
    Ogonek ą / (slash) / + u = ų
    Dot ȧ ] (right square bracket) ] + Z = Ż
    Underdot ạ ]] (two right square brackets) ] + ] + t = ṭ
    Tilde ã ~ (shift grave) ~ + U = Ũ
    Haček ǎ ; (semicolon) ; + c = č
  • Accents can combine (acute/grave/macron + ogonek). To do this, just type each accent first, and then the letter. The acute and tilde can also combine. Below are two examples.
    • macron + ogonek. Type _ / or / _, the output looks like:
      _ + / + o = ǭ
    • acute + tilde. Type ~ [ or [ ~, the output look like:
      ~ + [ + u = ṹ

  • Other characters are accessed through one of three means.
    • Superscript letters are typed using the ^ (shift-6) key.
      ^h =ʰ ^n=ⁿ* ^x=ˣ ^g=
      *Note: Some applications override the font on the superscript ⁿ character, using Arial instead of Aboriginal Serif. If this is the case, please do a “Search-and-replace”, changing the superscript n with the following version of the n:  (U+F7CE).
    • Other letters are produced by typing 2 semicolons ;;. This appears as an upside-down question mark "¿". This "¿" plus a letter key makes the following:
      • ¿ + c = ç
      • ¿ + d = ð
      • ¿ + e = ǝ
      • ¿ + g = ɣ
      • ¿ + n = ŋ
      • ¿ + t = θ
      • ¿ + u = ü
  • Finally, a group of characters is made using the ` key (back accent, located at the top left of US keyboards). These characters include the original keys which have been remapped above. When typed, the ` key makes the symbol ¤, so as not to confuse it with the grave accent.
    • ¤ + n = ƞ
    • ¤ + c = ʻ
    • ¤ + d = đ
    • ¤ + ? = ʔ
    • ¤ + punctuation key = original value

This keyboard should be able to reproduce the characters required for the Siouan languages which I have looked into. Again, if anything is missing, please email me. Keep in mind that many of the symbols are not available in regular fonts, and some have not been encoded in Unicode. Instead they have been placed in the private zone, and will not be visible on other Unicode fonts.

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Last Update: June 13, 2005