Subject: Re: bug#33024: 26.1.50; the ethiopic input method does not allow the insertion of a very frequent character

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2018 11:14:00 +0300

> From: yilkal argaw <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2018 06:13:21 +0300
> 
> I tried to use emacs for typing in Amharic the largest language that currently
> uses the Geez-script characters and some Geez to (the latin of
> Ethiopia). The ethipic input method does not allow for the insertion of
> አ character when pressing a . It rather inserts ኣ. The two letters
> sound the same but they are used differently. አ is very frequent in
> Amharic and Geez (I think it is one of the top 10 frequent
> characters). ኣ on the other hand is less frequent and not often use.
> Some language like Tigrigna and Tigre use the ኣ character more often
> than Amharic but the frequency of አ in those languages is very high
> too.

I think you can have what you want if you do this:

 (setq ethio-primary-language 'amharic)
 (ethio-select-a-translation)

Without this, the default primary language is tigrigna.

I don't know anything about Ethiopic languages, so I don't know how
reasonable is the default we use.  (I also think the defvar's at the
beginning of ethio-util.el should be defcustoms.)

> So this behavoiour should be altered to allow insertion of both አ
> and ኣ through variations in of the A key as:
> a:(1/1) 1.አ
> a2:(1/1) 1.ኣ
> a3:(1/1) 1.ዓ
> ae:(1/1) 1.ዐ
> aaa:(1/1) 1.ዓ
> aa:(1/1) 1.ዐ
> aaaa(1/1) 1. ዓ

Maybe we could have an alternative input method that worked like
above, since this is an incompatible change.

Thanks.