ศาลาชุมนุม

Dear Thai language fans,

I have created a new Thai keyboard for both PC/Mac. You can download for free at qwertythai.com. This keyboard is created for non Thai natives like us who are already familiar with the QWERTY keyboard arrangement. The Thai symbols are reached using the equivalent Thai phonetics. E.g., to get ความ, you type k-w-a-m, to get มา, m-a etc. Of course, knowing the Thai language, you know it's not always that straight forward. There is some level of re-orientation involved.

Go take a look.

Altough I recommend learning the Thai (Kedmanee) Keyboard layout (once u know it, you will be able to use it anywhere at any time... for example: phone, public computer etc), I have to admit this sounds interesting.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to take a closer look into it right now. It would be nice if you maybe add a video or screenshots on your homepage that clarifies how exactly the keyboard is supposed to work.

daฟาน wrote:Unfortunately I don't have the time to take a closer look into it right now.

If you don't have time to look at this, I doubt you have time to learn Kedmanee.
QWERTYThai is like a retrofit solution, using your existing finger memory of the QWERTY keyboard to type Thai.

Luckily I don't need to learn Kedmanee.
It took me 2-3 days until I could type Thai without any Thai letters on the keyboard by using a game for Thai children. It's really not a big deal.

Thing is... I like your idea, but to me there is a lack of visual explanations. I'm really curious how you integrated some letters like ท ฑ ธ ฐ ฏ ฎ ต ฒ etc but as I said, at the moment I can't look into it more closely so a video or some screenshots of they actual keyboard layout would have been helpful to me and maybe some users who actually want to try your keyboard.

You didn't even have time to download it? I've included keys charts on pdf in the download package. And the whole thing is free.

fire69water wrote:You didn't even have time to download it? I've included keys charts on pdf in the download package. And the whole thing is free.

You'd get more hits on the PDF if you gave a link from the web page rather than only including it in the download.

I did find your explanation awkward to access.

At one stage I began to wonder if you'd copied the design I put together 14 years ago (and later converted to HTML + javascript) - see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wo ... #rationale . The strong similarity rather suggests that the keyboard is reasonably intuitive. My original was a jury-rigged love-letter publisher on a work non-PC computer - text editor, separate bespoke Thai spell-checker, bespoke text-to-postscript converter, my own vector font, and ghostscript to preview the Thai. My HTML file is intended for those who are forbidden from enabling a Windows XP Thai keyboard - it can happen on work machines.

I notice the whole thing is free as in free beer, not as in free speech. If you're using MSKLC for Windows, why not include the source (.klc) file? Then the suspicious can compile it themselves if they don't trust your DLLs. So far as I am aware, the trusting can recover the .klc file from the DLL. It might be worth adding that Qwertythai works on a stand-alone PC - some keyboards don't!

At one stage I began to wonder if you'd copied the design I put together 14 years ago (and later converted to HTML + javascript) - see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wo ... #rationale . The strong similarity rather suggests that the keyboard is reasonably intuitive. My original was a jury-rigged love-letter publisher on a work non-PC computer - text editor, separate bespoke Thai spell-checker, bespoke text-to-postscript converter, my own vector font, and ghostscript to preview the Thai. My HTML file is intended for those who are forbidden from enabling a Windows XP Thai keyboard - it can happen on work machines.

This is the first time I came across your website. If there are similarities, it's just due to the fact that certain consonants are logically where they should be, based on the phonetics basis. But there are many differences, though.

We both saw a need for a Thai keyboard that is phonetically based (you 14 years earlier, me 2 years back), if not for others but at least for our own sanity.

fire69water wrote:We both saw a need for a Thai keyboard that is phonetically based (you 14 years earlier, me 2 years back), if not for others but at least for our own sanity.

Actually, I just had a need for entering Thai by typing ASCII - which is why my escape mechanism is '%' rather than AltGr. I hadn't learnt the Kedmanee keyboard, and I was in a hurry.