Toggle for bilingual keyboard (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Toggle for bilingual keyboard

26 September 2005
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3423079a11275,00.html

Auckland psychologist Tania Haerekitera Wolfgramm hopes schools and
central and local government organisations will dip into their IT
budgets to buy bilingual keyboards that make it easy to type documents
in Maori as well as English.

Ms Wolfgramm formed a company called Creatrix in 2001, housed in
Auckland's Icehouse technology incubator, and has put $150,000 in cash
and $200,000-worth of time into developing the Maori keyboard pack.

It comprises key-top stickers and software to adapt traditional
keyboards and is now on sale priced at $150.

Computer users can toggle between the Maori and traditional English
language "Qwerty" keyboard using one key.

In its Maori mode, users can key in vowels with macrons and double
consonants "ng" and "wh" - along with keywords such as he, ka, ki, ko
te, kia and ora - with one key stroke.

The pack includes a comprehensive Maori dictionary and spell checker.

Ms Wolfgramm says the Qwerty keyboard has had a big impact on the
world's 3000 indigenous languages that are spoken by less than 10,000
people and that these languages are dying out at the rate of "hundreds
every year".

"What we have got now is just not good enough. We cannot stem many of
the global forces which are at the root of language loss and decline.
However, we can analyse the directions that language loss, and
therefore language revitalisation, may move in."

Creatrix is developing a keyboard for a native American Indian tribe in
the south-east United States and is also in the early stages of
creating bilingual keyboards for Polynesian languages in Tonga, Samoa
and Hawaii.

The Maori key-top stickers come with either light or dark blue/green
"paua" backgrounds.

Ms Wolfgramm hopes Creatrix will be able to source keyboards with Maori
and English characters pre-printed on keys in about a year.

The company is now looking for contract sales reps.