Magic Keyboard!

January 8, 2007 11:31 PM

Multilingual Keyboard Emulator.
posted by anticlock (14 comments total)

Sweet, now I can type my last name correctly.
posted by IronLizard at 11:39 PM on January 8, 2007

I've always wondered what Chinese keyboards look like. And apparently, here's how they are used.

Via this excellent comment.
posted by aliasless at 11:40 PM on January 8, 2007

Њелл, исн'т тхис јуст дандѕ?
posted by pmbuko at 11:50 PM on January 8, 2007

Unfortunately, it is also wrong for my mother tongue, Telugu. Shift + : is not థ, but ఠ.
posted by the cydonian at 12:05 AM on January 9, 2007

早就有這個功能了, 謝謝
posted by Poagao at 12:19 AM on January 9, 2007

This is just what I need to type Japanese (as the Windows text input doesn't work for me for some wonky reason). Problem is this thing doesn't type the normal hiragana syllabary, but they've created a clunky custom key setup that's impossible to use. Great idea, though.
posted by zardoz at 1:44 AM on January 9, 2007

ب ہمسھ ٹہھ تغھموپ نھھیبغل ٹہمٹ ب'سھ اتوٹ بغوتیٹھر وجعھجغھ'و عجٹہھد صہبیھ ٹپحبغل ٹہبو۔
posted by brundlefly at 2:03 AM on January 9, 2007

I was ready to be impressed, but it doesn't even feature a UK keyboard layout...
posted by twine42 at 2:17 AM on January 9, 2007

I find it's much easier to just use the operating system's native ability to switch input methods (and sometimes keyboard layouts). On OS X it is easy as pissing a hole in the snow. On windows it's somewhat harder (not installed by default, also mediocre, bastards), but way better than this thing.
posted by blasdelf at 2:27 AM on January 9, 2007

way better than this thing

For you, maybe, but not for me (or, apparently, lots of other people). Besides, didn't you read the explanation at the page? "The need for this site arose due to the lack of possibility to change the keyboard language at internet places around the world. These places usually allow you to view sites in your language due to IE language encoding, but don't allow you to type in your language (because of administrator or system limitations)."

I love it—thanks, anticlock!
posted by languagehat at 5:15 AM on January 9, 2007

Thank you so much for this link. It will help immensely when our foreign exchange students are visiting and they want to email home or just read the news of their countries at one of their own countries' sites.
posted by Lynsey at 9:42 AM on January 9, 2007

Feh. The control key is still not where God intended it to be placed, to the left of the "A" key where the shift lock key is now placed.
posted by elmwood at 10:47 AM on January 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

How do so many people get along without an @ sign on their keyboards? I went to the exemplar boards for languages I'd suffered through previously and they weren't where I'd expected them to be if there at all. Was I just using internet-friendly keyboards this whole time or are the online ones missing something key?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 6:09 PM on January 9, 2007

Ogre Lawless: Most Indic keyboards don't have the complete set of punctuation marks. This is because Brahmi-based scripts already have 80+ letters, and 65000 possible variations on glyphs, so there isn't much space left on a keyboard with 101 characters.

We generally switch back to US 101/ QWERTY to type quotations, exclamation marks and such.
posted by the cydonian at 6:25 PM on January 9, 2007