Having problems with message search?
Dear Maruf Bhai,
--
এস, এম, রাইয়ান কবির
S. M. Raiyan Kabir
Most of the mac softwares are like that. For example, you can copy the MS Office folder form your friends Mac and paste it in you mac. Now, run MS Word put the serial number and its yours for ever. Other apps like Apple's iWork, Shiira (a webkit browser) and most of the softwares are portable in this sense almost from the beginning of Mac's in 1984. Of course there are some exceptions Stuffit Deluxe (Like WinRAR but use custom APIs) needs to install frameworks, iLife Suite needs to install framework.
As you can see in Mac you need to install softwares when you have to integrate the software with the system or when you want to use an API that is not for public use. In the later case you need not to restart your Mac. But system integration some times need log off and some times need restart. For example you install a keyboard layout (which can be a personal layout that will be used by only one of the users of your multi user mac) you need a logoff. But when you are installing a core software like quicktime you need a restart (although it seems to be only a video player, but quicktime in a mac is the core software for any kind of video and still picture display. Without it you can run the OS but no jpg, gif, mov, mpg etc file will open).
To make a keyboard layout portable you need not to have a complete app. you can have a shell script which can be wrapped like a software. But as the keyboard layout has to behave like a part of the OS you have to put them in their required places and relogin to activate them. Some is true for the fonts.
The solution is you can write 2 scripts the 1st one will copy the layout and the fonts in their required location and relogin. the 2nd one will remove them from their and relogin. But the wrapped software will be running. There will be only 2 options, 1 will run the installation script and add itself to the startup items (if needed it will copy itself some where in a temp folder). When you are reloggedin the software seemed to be running and enabled the keyboard. Now, when you'll quit the app it will run the remove script and remove all fonts and keyboard layout and the copy of itself that it installed and then quit.
This will show the user that he is using a portable version of the mac keyboard. But it will involve 2 relogin. Apple does not provide any other direct way to do the job. You have to hack the system to get it done. As you know the problem with Bijoy, they have hack a way with every windows release. In mac that may not be that tough to make such software. Apple provide Input Method Framework. But you need to install that and it won't be a portable solution. You can write an kernel extension but you need to be an admin to install it. As a temporary user you are not supposed to have admin account on the mac you are using.
As a result, you need to find a hack to implement a complete portable solution. I can tell you that even if you find such a hack Apple is there to block within 3-4 months in their next minor service pack (up to now after release of Leopard apple has given 4 service pack and the next one is in its beta and will be released with in one or two months).
Raiyan
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 6:19 AM, Mohammad Maruf Hossain <mail@...> wrote:
Dear Raiyan,
Though you have raised many issues in this mail, I'll point out only one of them: portability of Avro. The way you explained portability is not the way Avro claimed its portability. These days some software company claimed (i.e. uTorrent) that you don't have to have your software installed in your workstation, rather you have the .EXE file in a USB drive and plug into any Windows machine and can run that program.many regards,M. Maruf HossainResearcher,Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering,The University of MelbourneOn 09/09/2008, at 3:27 PM, Raiyan Kabir wrote:Dear Antony,I'm very happy to know that you can use the Avro keyboard for scripts other than Bangla. But the problem is, it is a closed source software. As a result, you cannot port it to other platforms. In mac Apple provides strong API's for making input method softwares. But I don't know how tricky it will be to add a font which is placed other than the fonts folders of the system. Actually if you want to make a keyboard layout like avro you need to learn Objective-C and Cocoa framework. Specially, the Input Method Framework. But before that you need to be a real mac user. Running Windows on a beautify Mac machine will not do. To develop the software you need to learn Xcode.But I have one question, why its necessary to make a portable keyboard? I think its better to get a open source like Avro that can be ported to any platform you like. Its impossible to make a single program that will run on all platform. You can use Java but that will never give you the level of integration you want with the system in Windows. In Mac Java was one of the primary development language. But Apple stopped its development of Java as one of the primary development language. But Cocoa-Java Apps are still supported. But it will be a much tough to build a Cocoa-Java apps because most of the recent development by Apple in 10.4 and 10.5 are not available in Java. Above all it will be a slow program. You can use Cocoa-Python or Cocoa-Ruby as your primary development language. Apple started to support this languages from 10.5.But Objective-C will be the best way to implement your program.You have a keyboard editor available for fee, the Ukelele. But you need to run a software that will add a keyboard layout and fonts with the systems input method system and font systems from a non standard position will not be that easy. Well you can copy your fonts to the users font folder and instantly that font will be available in all running and not running apps. This is a beauty of Mac. You don't need to restart even your application. Its just adds automatically to your font panel. But for keyboard layout needs a log off (not a restart). So adding a keyboard layout or input method will be tricky. You need to know the system from its depth.You may write a kernel extension but you need to install it deep into the system and you need Administrative access. As a result your program will not get the level of portability you are thinking in this way. Yes, you can add kernel extension without a restart or logoff. But it is not likely that any one will give you his admin pass just to use his Mac temporarily. Mac is well aware of the security and ask for admin name and pass when you want to add something to the system even if you are logged in as an admin user. So, you need the pass. After all it is a UNIX.So, you have to discovar some other method to add your program. It will be great challenge.If you accept logoff than it can be an easy task. Because Apple provides option to add user level keyboard layout and fonts. Run a software that will copy the fonts in the fonts folder of the user (you don't need any pass for it) and copy your keyboard layout into the keyboradlayout folder and logoff and relogin. Go to system preference and enable to keyboard layout and you are ready to use the keyboard layout. When you are done, run another program that will remove your fonts and keyboard layout from the system and logoff. done.
RaiyanThanks for the info
I've CC'd this to Omi Azad, I hope that this is okay.
Judging by what you said, the features that would bring Ekushey for the mac up to the same level as usefulness as Avro and would make my next choice of laptop a mac would be:
In fact, assuming that Avro works okay on a mac running XP or Vista I think I must get a mac anyway and the above will just be the icing on the cake. I was toying with getting a vye mini laptop http://www.vyepc.com/?sec=1&prd=8 .
- a portable edition that runs from a USB stick
- a virtual font facility that allows you to use your own fonts on someone elses mac without installing them
- the ability to load xml keyboard map files from a USB stick
As a matter of interest, What languages do you program in? What technologies did you have to become familiar with in order to complete this project?Glastonbury, Somerset, UK
all the best
Antony Brand
p.s.
I wrote the following a bit earlier. I think I've summarised the most important points above so only read it if you want to!Please find 2 AAT Mac fonts in http://www.ekushey.org/?page/mac_download both of them are working fine.
Do these AAT fonts also work on Windows machines? If not, could they be extended to do so?As wrongly mentioned in the pages Mac OS X prefer AAT over OpenType. But in one minor version of the OS OpenType was given more priority than AAT. Now, in 10.5.x all prefer AAT.
Forgive my ignorance but doesn't OpenType potentially mean the same font can be used for mac and PC. Is this not the case with bangla at the moment? Can't AAT information be included in OpenType fonts? Where does Uniscribe fit in with all this?
Yes, Apple uses XML layouts and you have easy tools to edit the layouts:You can fine several layouts in http://www.ekushey.org/?page/mac_download.In Mac OS X 10.5 Apple provided dedicated API for keyboard development. Its possible for us to make an Avro for Mac but to do that I need to know the algorithm of AVRO. How it works?It comes in two different versions, one that is installed on the machine and theportable edition that lives on a USB stick or external hard drive
I like to think of AVRO as a collection of different specific technologies that work well to together.
The installed version is basically a bangla typing program with a number of layouts, I assume pretty much the same as what Ekushey does. The layouts are:
Avro Phonetic (English to Bangla), Avro Easy, Bornona, National (Jatiya) and UniBijoy. I do not use any of these.
The installed version also includes a keyboard editor, presumably something similar to your XML based keyboard layout editing tools. I have also successfully used it to create a layout to type in Devanagari and diacritics (accented latin characters). If I wanted to I could do the same for european languages, mathematical symbols, greek letters etc in an evening or so. Although the people behind Avro appear to want to restrict themselves to just the Bangla language they seem to have unwittingly created something that goes a long way to enabling something as just as revolutionary for most of the languages of the world, perhaps excluding Chinese/Japanese where where more sophisticated input mechanisms are required.
I don't know the algorithm used as far as the keyboard mapping goes, I just know that it does enough for me to be able to do what I need to do, and the keyboard layout is close enough to the scholarly sanskrit standard (vaishnava)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard-Kyoto to be easy to learn and remember. Of course if I had "carte blanche" (=absolute freedom) to design my own software from scratch it would probably be somewhat different. I don't have that luxury and I don't have enough time in the day to dream about what my ideal keyboard layout would be!
The portable edition doesn't have the keyboard editor however it can use keyboard layouts that are created using the installed edition.
its extremely valuable extra facilities are:
- Type in Bangla (and loads of other languages) on other people's computers without messing up their settings
- Use your own fonts on other peoples' XP or Vista computer. I'd be interested to know how they implemented this, whether they developed this themselves or it was somebody elses standard library
- Use your own keyboard layout on others' computers; a simple consequence of creating a keyboard editor software
FYI, I'm the developer behind the ekushey's mac solution. I have done it 2 years ago. Currently I'm working on AAT OpenType hybrid font. How to generate such font with from an OpenType one. So that you can use OpenType fonts string away on a Mac. I think I'll be able to come up with a program that will do the job automatically.I would like to learn about AVRO's algorithm. How its doing the transliteration. I'm using SolimanLipi and Rupali in my mac for years.
Thank you
শুভেচ্ছা রইল।ইতি-রাইয়ানRaiyanHi Raiyan
Which aspect of Avro were you referring to? There are a number of aspects. Initially the most important one would be (1 below) the ability to create customised keyboard layouts (which would ideally work on both PC and Mac and and in the future Linux). I read at http://tanmoy.tripod.com/mac.htmlthat OSX uses an XML file to store keyboard layouts. This would clearly be a step in the right direction towards the ultimate aim of having something work cross platform with a web interface. By the way the products athttp://www.tavultesoft.com/ seem to be pretty much there but misses (2), (3) and (4) and is quite expensive.
I'd be very interested in the steps you had to take and the problems you had to overcome to port Ekushey to the mac.
all the best
Antony
Glastonbury, Somerset, UK
p.s. I have invited you to chat on Google Talk oh and where do you live?
2008/9/8 Raiyan Kabir <raiyan.kabir@...>Dear Antony,Do you have Avro like algorithm for Bangla? I'll be very happy to implement that for Mac. If you have please let me have it.I'll implement that and try to put that in Mac OS as a built in option.Raiyan--Hello
I was just daydreaming about my ideal multilingual software and thought that it would:I think that whoever can crack this one is sitting on a goldmine. Get the whole thing to run platform independently from a web based interface is on to a winner.
- allow you to create your own keyboard layout (like Avro)
- allow you to take your own fonts with you wherever you go (like Avro Portable)
- allow you to type in bangla on someone else's computer (Avro Portable does that for XP and Vista)
- be available on Windows, Linux and Mac (Ekushey has made buying a mac a possibility for me now. How long before Adobe software handles indic scripts properly)
- work for other languages (I've used Avro to type in Devanagari and for accented Latin characters. Greek and Cyrillic would be easy to implement).
Feedback, either on the list or by email welcome
all the best
Antony Brand
Glastonbury, Somerset, Uk
এস, এম, রাইয়ান কবির
S. M. Raiyan Kabir
--
---------x---------
Antony Brand
(Ananga Das Kirtaniya
Sankirttan Ananda Das)
--
এস, এম, রাইয়ান কবির
S. M. Raiyan Kabir
--
এস, এম, রাইয়ান কবির
S. M. Raiyan Kabir
--
---------x---------
Antony Brand
(Ananga Das Kirtaniya
Sankirttan Ananda Das)
--
এস, এম, রাইয়ান কবির
S. M. Raiyan Kabir
--
এস, এম, রাইয়ান কবির
S. M. Raiyan Kabir
Offline 
Send Email