Post MtnGqRR3kAP

Tamas Ferencz Dec 10, 2017 (10:16)

This is a hypothetical question to those of you who know more about programming than me - I myself amused myself a bit with some little Python years ago but never really learned it. So. The upsurge of touch-screens and on-screen keyboards eliminate the problem of mapping Tengwar fonts onto QWERTY keyboards. Would it be a very difficult task to write a chat app (say, in Python or any other language) that would include a Tengwar keyboard? Or I don't know if any of the existing apps provide the possibility to write a plugin for such a functionality?
Of course it only would add to our problems as it's difficult enough to write in Quenya in Latin let alone in Tengwar, but hey 😊

Leonard W. Dec 10, 2017 (10:44)

You can certainly write a custom keyboard for Android and iOS. I imagine that one of the only complications would be the positioning of the tehtar, and font mapping, since every font has its own idiosyncrasies.

Apple documentation using the programming language Swift (or Objective-C):
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/CustomKeyboard.html

Tamas Ferencz Dec 10, 2017 (12:29)

Actually I think that can be resolved by creating a font which contains all tehtarised versions of each tengwa as a separate character. The keyboard layout would have the témar, and then on a long press you can select the tehtarised version of the tengwa just like you can enter accented characters on the Google keyboard for instance.

Ицхак Пензев Dec 10, 2017 (13:35)

Dirk has got such a font, AFAIK.

Leonard W. Dec 10, 2017 (13:54)

Ah, that is a great idea! :) I am actually tempted to give it a go, but I have too many things going on at the moment!

Tamas Ferencz Dec 10, 2017 (14:41)

+Ицхак Пензев does he? Have you got a link by any chance? There is this project (looks dead): freetengwar.sourceforge.net - Free Tengwar Font Project: Home

Tamas Ferencz Dec 12, 2017 (13:54)

+Ицхак Пензев thank you - will definitely have a look when I can get out behind this corporate firewall