Figure 2: Inscript keyboard (with multiple characters on a single key)
Commercially the demand for Devnagari input has been patched by the Inscript keyboard. This is essentially a QWERTY keyboard with Devnagari characters mapped onto the keys. The minimum number of characters that are required even representing Devnagari is 54, base consonants (34), vowels (19), and a halant key. This excludes Devnagari numerals and various Vedic symbols and modifiers i.e. Ref, Ru, Half Ra. This issue manifests itself on this keyboard, which is essentially meant for entering just 26 alphabets. The aftereffect is that each key has multiple characters (two to three characters per key) mapped onto them. These additional symbols on the keys are inputted using combinations of toggle keys like shift, alt and control. This keyboard has a very high learning curve due to the multiple shift modes as is suited for professional typewriters who undergo rigorous training to learn this keyboard.
3 Introduction to the GKB
Computing devices demand text input schemes that can be quickly learnt and retained to achieve a fair speed and easy to use rather than “hunt and peck”. Roman keyboards are not particularly amenable to accommodate the phonetic
Keyboards support a ten fingered typing and also have two entry modes namely expert and novice. While the novice uses “hunting and pecking” to type, experts do a head up
There is an analogy between keyboards and styli. Keyboards can be used with no training: the letters can be tapped out
Working on this analogy we tried to develop a
3.1Gestures
Few major criterions for designing gesture (matras) were, 1.easy to learn, 2.fast to write and 3.easy to retain matras. Instead of developing new gestures for each Devnagari matra (as in the case of graffiti and unistrokes), we implemented these matras as they appear in the Varnmala. The only difference being the breakage of multi stroke matras into a combination of different single stroke matras. Also for a half character we designed a horizontal stroke, which was derived from the mental model of cutting a character in to half.
All these aforementioned criterions for matras were satisfied as there was no learning involved; users had to write them they way they normally write on paper. Also, the retention was easy as the users had to learn few matras namely horizontal strokes and oblique scoring for getting secondary glyphs from the keypad.