Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Typing Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz is a Turkic language spoken in Kyrgyzstan and a few other areas. While both the Arabic and Latin scripts have been used to write it in the past, Cyrillic is now the standard. The alphabet is essentially the same as Russian but with 3 additional characters: Ң, Ү, Ө.

OS X comes with fonts that cover Kyrgyz, but with no keyboard layout. On my Dropbox you can find two versions: KyrgyzCYR, which is the same as used on Windows machines, and KyrgyzPH, which is modeled on the Apple Russian-Phonetic layout and may be easier for people used to QWERTY. The extra three characters are found on the Option and Option + Shift levels for н, у, and о.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/8bzhohfnplb6umw/KyrgyzCYR.keylayout?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bd6h9p7gqbr8rj2/KyrgyzPH.keylayout?dl=0


Switching from Cyrillic back to Latin (which was used for a number of years before 1940) is reportedly being considered.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Tom

I am doing some I18N work on a web site and I've run into a problem with Safari, I can find no way to change the locale that Safari sends when requesting pages.

I've changed all of the international settings that I can find to UK, my iMac was purchased in the US and so was configured for US locale, but Safari still requests en (rather than en_gb).

Do you know how to change the locale in Safari?

Thanks
Andrew

Tom Gewecke said...

In OS X the locale is usually determined by what language is at the top of the list in System Preferences/International/Languages. So you should try using the Edit button to add British English to the list and moving that to the top. If that doesn't work for Safari, I don't know the answer.

Hp.M said...

Hi Tom

first, let me introduce my self.
my name is Nur, I am from Kyrgyzstan.
a BiG thanks for your
- KyrgyzCYR.keylayout
- KyrgyzPH.keylayout
works.

as I know, no one made such a thing before for a Mac.

But now, I want to let the world know, that there is a keybaord with Kyrgyz Layout.
It is suitable with Windows XP and Vista (32/64). It uses Unicode.

I hope, it can be helpful to make Kyrgyzcha typing on a Mac platform/computers.

best regards,
Nur : nurkubat@gmail.com

Thomas said...

I've downloaded the file from iDisk, but I can't see how to get it to work. I don't have the application of open it.

Hope you can help, it would be great to be able to type Kyrgyz!

Thanks

Tom Gewecke said...

Thomas -- It's not something you open. You just take the .keylayout file and drop it into Home/Library/Keyboard Layouts. Then logou/login. Then go to system prefs/international/input menu and check its box. Then select it in the "flag" menu and type.

Altynbek Usenbekov said...

Thank you Tom, it works.

Naoki said...

Hi Tom,

I came across at your post while looking for Kyrgyz keyboard layout for Mac. Are those two keyboard layout files available? iDisk has already gone. How can I get them.

Regards,

Naoki

Tom Gewecke said...

Naoki - I put new urls in the post

jazgul said...

Hello Tom,

First thank you for your kind work

When trying to download the file onto my mac, dropbox doesn't actually download the file...it just opens it and the only way is to save it as a web archive

Is there anything I do wrong?

Thank you!!

Tom Gewecke said...

jazgul -- download as page source and delete the .txt from the file name. Or hold the option key down while downloading and delete the .txt from the file name.

Anonymous said...

I have an OS X Yosemite.

Using Safari, I saved the website as a page source onto my desktop. I then dragged the file into Home/Library/Keyboard Layouts and erased the extension .txt

For some reason, the file does not save directly into Keyboard Layouts but saving it elsewhere first then dragging the file worked.

Bek said...

Hi Tom,

I just realized that your dropbox link is only for Mac/Apple. Do you have for windows?

Thanks

Tom Gewecke said...

Bek -- Sorry, no, I only have keyboards for Mac. I don't use Windows at all.

Iskender Asanaliev said...

Hi Tom!

Can you please share your file again? Dropbox link doesn't work

Tom Gewecke said...

I fixed the llinks, hopefully they will work now.