Thai Input Method for Smart Phones

James ClarkWe assume that the device provides at least:

•

26 alphabetic keys

•

1 or 2 shift keysThe keyboard is one of three states S1, S2 or S3. Initially, the keyboard is in S1. The shiftkeys can be used to change the keyboard to S2 or S3. After using an alphabetic key, thestate always returns to S1. If there is only one shift key available, then it cycles the statebetween S1, S2 and S3. If there are two shift keys, then the first shifts between S1 and S2,and the second shifts between S1 and S3.We divide the 87 characters in the Thai Unicode range U+0Exx into four groups, G1-G4,where G1-G3 have 26 characters each, and G4 has the remaining 9 characters. The 26alphabetic keys enter characters from G1, G2 or G3 according as the state of the keyboardis S1, S2 or S2. The characters in G4 cannot be entered directly on the keyboard.The basic principle used to divide the characters into groups is frequency of occurrence: themost frequently occurring characters are in G1, the next most frequently occurring are in G2,and so on. The frequency data comes fromhttp://thailang.nectec.or.th/downloads/thaistat/uni_gram_characters.txt. The groupings in thefollowing table differ from those derived from the frequency data as follows:

•

the obsolete characters

ฃ

and

ฅ

are in G4; I am not sure why the frequencydata shows numerous occurrences of these characters;

•

ๆ

is in G3, even though frequency data would put it in G2; the reason for thisis to maximize the number of alphabetic characters in G2;

•

ฐ

is in G3, even though the frequency data would put it in G2; according to thefrequency data,

ฐ

is more common than

ฉ and ฝ

; however, I felt that it wasmore natural to include

ฉ

and

ฝ

in G2 and put

ฐ

in G3.It might seem problematic that

ๅ

is in G4, however

า

can be automatically turned into

ๅ

after

ฤ

and

ฦ

.There are obviously many possible ways to allocate characters to keys within each group.The following table suggests a possible allocation based on alphabetic order. The reasonsfor using alphabetic order are that it is very familiar to every literate Thai and that Thaialphabetic order is systematic and based on linguistic principles. The alternative is tosomehow adapt to the existing Thai keyboard layout. However, there is no single obviousway to do so, and it is not clear to what extent familiarity with the standard Thai keyboardlayout will assist in use of such an adapted layout.1