Punjabi Unicode Further Information 

PunjabiXL Mini for Laptops (PXL-502B) - Available on Ebay 

Punjabi Unicode Inscript Layout Weaknesses

Inscript is the internatioanlly recognised Punjabi Standard Keyboard for the Gurmukhi script. The philosophy behind the development of Inscript keyboard layout was to consolidate the common salient features of all the Indian language scripts and develop a layout with the following principles:

• The division of the keyboard into Vowel and Consonant groups on the middle two rows.
• The accommodation of vowels as long and short on the same key, where such distinction occurs.
• The accommodation of consonants on the basis of the Vargas with unaspirate and aspirate on the same key.
• The possibility to move from Indian scripts to Latin based scripts.
• A phonetic design (in the context of Indian languages) which allows a person typing in one Indian script to type in any other Indian script, thereby ensuring accommodation of all Indian languages on one single keyboard.
• Make the keyboards language dependent instead of the existing script dependency.

These principles, however noble they may sound, overlooked the most important practical aspects. For example, the punctuation marks (such and colon and semi-colon) and other modern symbols (such as %, +, =, {, }, [, ]) were totally neglected. The developers appears to have a very haphazard and narrow approach whereby some of these marks/symbols were retained (perhaps fortuitously than by thoughtful design!) while others were left out altogether. This constitutes one of the major weaknesses of Inscript which is the root cause of its total rejection by the people. As a result this gave rise to the development of a plethora of non-standard keyboards which have done untold damage to the developement of the Punjabi laguage. Further, in any of the Inscript related documents, no rationale or explanation is provided for the process followed.

To address these and other shortcomings, an enhanced version of the Inscript keyboard, PunjabiXL, has been developed.

PunjabiXL^® Layout - Unicode Based Gurmukhi Script

In view of the above listed Inscript weaknesses the following solution is proposed.

PunjabiXL retains the original Inscript layout in its entirety for full compatibility. The missing punctuation marks and standard symbols which have been incorporated are as follows.

These symbols are now fully accessible when the PunjabiXL keyboard is selected. There is no need to toggle to the Roman layout. These symbols are assigned to a mix of “Dead” and other available keys. In developing the PunjabiXL layout other international language keyboards have been widely reviewed and consulted.

The underlying rationale for PunjabiXL can be summarised as follows:

• Retain the original Inscript layout without any changes,
• As far as practicable, assign marks/symbols to those keys or key-strokes which are also found on the Roman layout.
• Where keys have already been assigned in the Inscript layout, ensure that mark/symbols can be assigned to the neighbouring keys in the same keyboard region.
• Utilise ‘dead keys’ intuitively and efficiently. (for example, ‘ੜ’ has been assigned to the Inscript ‘ਰ’ (Roman ‘J’) key).
• As far as possible only use SHIFT + <key> and Alt GR + <key> key combinations.
• Avoid the use of Alt GR + SHIFT + <key> key combination altogether. It is, however, noted that ੴ is typed with Alt GR + SHIFT + <X> in the original Inscript layout. This has been retained. There are no other characters requiring this key combination.

PunjabiXL^® Advantages

The PunjabiXL layout is designed with practicality and speed being the determining factors. All effort has also been made to ensure that commonly used symbols for technical writing are also incorporated to avoid repeated toggle to Roman layout. By retaining the Inscript layout, it is made as intuitive as possible. Complicated and cumbersome use of key combinations (such as Alt GR + SHIFT + <key>) have been avoided with the use of a small number of key combinations. Some of the advantages can be listed as follows:

• It retains the original Inscript layout in its entirety. This makes PunjabiXL fully compatible with Inscript but with improved efficiency and useability.
• All punctuation marks and frequently used symbols are now part of the Gurmukhi character set, thereby making typing scientific and technical papers easier.
• The layout is comprehensive, stand-alone and complete in itself and includes all the symbols and marks used in the Punjabi language.
• All “Dead keys” have been utilised, thereby removing inefficiency and ‘Unprofessional’ look.
• Frequently used symbols and punctuation marks are typed with either the SHIFT+ <key> or Alt GR+ <key>, which is a normal practice.
• The cumbersome use of three key combinations such as Alt GR + Shift + <Key> has been discarded except where it is part of the original Inscript layout.
• The layout has been made as intuitive as possible keeping in mind the QWERTY layout and the Inscript Principles.
• Toggle between Roman QWERTY and Punjabi Keyboard has been avoided except in the use of very rare symbols or accessing the Roman Character set.
• The keyboard is secular in character as there is no need to print religious symbols on the actual physical keys. These symbols are accessible by Shortcuts as listed below.
• Typing speed is markedly improved as no toggle or three key combinations are required.

Installation

1. Under the 5abixl folder locate the setup.exe file
2. Double click on setup.exe and follow the instructions.

Selecting PunjabiXL^® keyboard

The procedure for enabling Punjabi on all Windows computers is very similar. The following steps might be helpful.

1. Click on the Start button and select Control Panel.
2. In Control Panel double click on Regional and Language Options.
3. Click on Keyboards and Languages tab.
4. Click on Change Keyboards
5. Select General Tab
6.  In the Installed Services tab click on the Add button
7. This will display all the available languages
8. Select Punjabi and make sure that under Keyboard the Punjabi box is ticked
9. Click on OK button.
10. Click OK again if it goes back to the previous screen.
11. Now Punjabi is available for typing using Unicode.
12. You can switch between English (En) and Punjabi (Pa) from the desk top.
13. This is done by clicking on the EN button at the bottom Right Hand corner of the DeskTop.
14. When you click on EN, it will display Pa (Punjabi). Make sure it is ticked by clicking on Pa.
15. Open MS Word or any Wordprocessing application and start typing.

ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਕੀ-ਬੋਰਡ ਉਤਾਰਨ ਅਤੇ ਇੰਸਟਾਲ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ:

1. ਸਟਾਰਟ ਬਟਨ ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ ਅਤੇ ਕੰਟਰੋਲ ਪੈਨਲ ਦੀ ਚੋਣ ਕਰੋ
2. ਕੰਟਰੋਲ ਪੈਨਲ ਵਿੱਚ Regional and Language Options ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ
3. Keyboards and Languages ਦੇ ਬਟਨ ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ
4. Change Keyboard ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ
5. General ਬਟਨ ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ
6. Installed Services ਵਿੱਚ Add ਬਟਨ ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ
7. ਇਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਤੁਹਾਨੂੰ ਸਭ ਉਪਲਬਧ ਭਾਸ਼ਾਵਾਂ ਮਿਲ ਜਾਂ ਦਿਸ ਪੈਣਗੀਆਂ
8. Punjabi ਹੁਣ ਦੀ ਚੋਣ ਕਰੋ ਅਤੇ ਧਿਆਨ ਰਹੇ ਕਿ Keyboard ਥੱਲੇ Punajbi ਅਤੇ PunajbiXL ਵਾਲ਼ੇ ਡੱਬੇ ਤੇ ਹੀ ਟਿੱਕ ਕੀਤਾ ਹੋਇਆ ਹੋਵੇ.
9. ਹੁਣ OK ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰ ਦਿਓ
10. ਜੇ ਇਹ ਦੁਬਾਰਾ ਪਿਛਲੀ ਸਕਰੀਨ ਤੇ ਚਲਾ ਜਾਵੇ ਤਾਂ ਇੱਕ ਵਾਰ ਫੇਰ OK ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰੋ
11. ਹੁਣ ਤੁਹਾਡੇ ਕੰਪਿਊਟਰ ਤੇ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਲਿਖਣ ਲਈ ਉਪਲਬਧ ਹੋ ਗਈ ਹੈ
12. ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਲਿਖਦੇ ਸਮੇਂ ਲੋੜ ਪੈਣ ਤੇ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ (EN) ਅਤੇ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (PA) ਆਸਾਨੀ ਨਾਲ਼ ਬਦਲੀ ਜਾ ਸਕਦੀ ਹੈ।
13.  ਅਜਿਹਾ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ ਵਿੰਡੋਜ਼ ਅਤੇ ਖਾਲੀ ਥਾਂ ਵਾਲ਼ੀ ਵੱਡੀ ਕੀਅ (ਸਪੇਸ ਬਾਰ) ਇਕੱਠੀਆਂ ਦਬਾਓ। ਵੱਖ ਵੱਖ ਕੀ-ਬੋਰਡ ਤੇ ਇਨਾਂ ਦੀ ਸਥਿਤੀ ਵੱਖ ਵੱਖ ਹੋ ਸਕਦੀ ਹੈ। ਜਾਂ Alt + SHIFT ਇਕੱਠੀਆਂ ਦਬਾਉਣ ਨਾਲ ਵੀ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ (EN ਜਾਂ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ (PA) ਚੁਣੀ ਜਾ ਸਕਦੀ ਹੈ।
14. ਵਾਪਸ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਕੀ-ਬੋਰਡ ਤੇ ਆਉਣ ਲਈ ਫਿਰ EN ਦਬਾਉਣ ਨਾਲ਼ ਇਹ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ‘ਚ ਤਬਦੀਲ ਹੋ ਜਾਵੇਗਾ। ਪਰ PunajbiXL ਦੀ ਚੋਣ ਵਾਸਤੇ ਜ਼ਰੂਰੀ ਹੈ ਕਿ ਇਸਤੇ ਦੁਬਾਰਾ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕਰਕੇ PunajbiXL ਤੇ ਕਲਿੱਕ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾਵੇ।
15. ਹੁਣ MS Word ਜਾਂ ਕੋਈ ਵੀ ਉਪਲਬਧ ਲਿਖਣ ਸਰੋਤ ਖੋਹਲ ਕੇ ਲਿਖਣਾ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕਰ ਦਿਓ।

The PunjabiXL keyboard layout is shown in the following diagram.

For any other information or to report problems please contact: info@5abi.com

PunjabiXL: Gurmukhi Keyboard for MS Windonws
(Inscript Unicode Compliant)
UK Layout Mapping

PunjabiXL: Gurmukhi Keyboard for MS Windonws
(Inscript Unicode Compliant)
US Layout Mapping

09/07/15

Punjabi Vikas Manch, UK
PunjabiXL Mechanical Punjabi Unicode Keyboard
Compatible with Gurmukhi Unicode and Inscript
Enhanced Functionality and Features

ਹੋਰ ਜਾਣਕਾਰੀ ਭਰਪੂਰ ਕੜੀਆਂ