Tools for acquiring Chechen text

Chechen Encodings

There doesn't seem to be many web pages with Chechen text on the web. It is probable that Chechen text is encoded in KOI8 or CP866 and the palochka is probably represented by the digit 1 or a Latin capital I. Both of these encodings are well supported on Windows. Text can be imported into MS Word and saved as Unicode text.

Typing Chechen text on Windows 98/NT/2K/XP.

We have an experimental Chechen keyboard available (created with Keyman) in a self-installing package that supports input of Chechen text encoded in Unicode.

During installation of this package, the user will be asked if they want to install a Standard or Home Edition version of Keyman. If the Standard Keyman is installed, this keyboard will only work for 30 days after installation, but if the Home Edition Keyman is installed, the keyboard will work indefinitely. The Home Edition only allows 2 keyboards to be installed at one time.

The layout of this Chechen keyboard is based on the set of keyboard stickers which can be found at http://www.language-keyboard.com/stickers/chechen_keyboard_stickers_(cyrillic).jpg.

Once you have it installed, open the document you are viewing/editing and select the Unicode Chechen keyboard from the "K" icon in the taskbar, on the right-hand side of the toolbar.

To disable Chechen input, select the "No Keymap keyboard" option from the "K" icon on the taskbar.

Notes: Because the default fonts that come with Windows 2000/XP do not have full Unicode coverage, some programs (i.e. Internet Explorer) cannot display the Unicode encoded Chechen palochka properly. The palochka is often written with the digit 1 or the Latin capital letter I. The keyboard provided above inserts the Latin capital letter I because it looks like the palochka.

This may require some minor processing of the text to convert the latin capital letter I to the real Unicode palochka, which is character code 0x04C0 (in hexadecimal).