MULTILINGUAL KEYBOARD

摘要

A diacritic chording system uses a single standard keyboard layout to generate diacritical characters used, for example, by Latin-based languages or languages based on a Roman character set, providing a universal keyboard. The key combination required to select a diacritic is consistent, independent of the language the user is typing. The diacritic chording system uses chording to obtain characters modified by diacritics, i.e., diacritical characters. The key combinations in the diacritic chord are chosen in such a way to aid memorization by positional association of the keys or by logic association of the keys within the diacritic chord. The use of a combination of positional association and logical association eliminates conflicts in mapping diacritics for different languages. The diacritic chording system also provides a screen overlay as a mnemonic to illustrate which diacritic chords provide the desired diacritical character.

主权项

1. A method of generating a plurality of language specific diacritic characters for languages using a single layout for a character entry device, comprising:
monitoring the character entry device for a plurality of concurrent selection events wherein the selection events comprise at least a first selection event and a second selection event, wherein said first event is a character inversion event; determining whether the first selection event and the second selection event in combination comprise a first language specific diacritic character, and emitting the first language specific diacritic character.