LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:7 July 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

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         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

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PuthuNira – A Set of New Keyboard Layouts for Malayalam

Ajith R. MBBS, DCP

1.1. Abstract

The conventional keyboard layout schemes used by Malayalam, one of the Indian languages, do not consider the ease of typing the language. This study suggests two new keyboard layouts for Malayalam designed using character usage frequency, describes methods for comparing ease of typing and uses the methods to compare the two commonly used keyboard layouts InScript and Remington with the newly suggested layouts PuthuNira Aarambham and Puthunira Charutha. The study result suggests that the new layouts will be easier to type than conventional Malayalam keyboard layout.

1.2. Introduction

Malayalam is the language native to the people of Kerala, a state in south India and spoken by over 38 million (Gutman and Avanzati 2013). Malayalam has an abugida system of writing (Gutman and Avanzati 2013). The number of glyphs originally required to write Malayalam was over 500. This was brought down to 90 following an orthography reform in 1967 with further modifications in 1969 (Government of Kerala 1971). With the advent of computing, Malayalam, along with other Indian languages, was represented using ISCII (“INDIAN SCRIPT CODE FOR INFORMATION INTERCHANGE - ISCII” 1991). ISCII has been rendered largely obsolete with the rising adoption of Unicode to represent Malayalam (Kerala Government Information Technology Department 2008). Unicode 15 represents 118 Malayalam characters, of which 69 are regularly used (“The Unicode® Standard Version 15.0 – Core Specification” 2022). Unicode doesn’t have separate encodings for consonant signs. In conjuncts, zero width non joiner is used to display the consonant form rather than its sign.

Malayalam computer keyboard layout followed the Remington typewriter sequence initially (“Remington” 2010). Ralminov and others have modified Remington layouts modifying the original by adding the missing keys (Ralminov 2008), (“ThoolikaUnicode”, 2006). Phonetic transliteration schemes used to type Malayalam include Mozhi, Swanalekha, Google and others. InScript layout standardized by the Government of India and approved by the Government of Kerala is the decreed standard Malayalam keyboard layout, which was enhanced recently (“A Document for Enhanced InScript Keyboard Layout 5.2” 2010).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Ajith R. MBBS, DCP
Nirvriti, T.C. 5/3457(3), Kezhuvankara
Pongumoodu, Medical College P.O.
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 695 011
ajith@disroot.org
+91 89390 01898
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