by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/09/24 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/09/24/8963178.aspx
Regular readers may recall that I have mentioned Marc Durdin in the past, especially in posts like the recent The key to key messages is a key contribution, where I went on for a bit about the fact he impresses me professionally....
I also enjoyed the Australian beer that he and Gary McMullan brought for me when I saw them last. I suppose that might be being happy with the two of them personally. :-)
I vaguely recall the night when Marc and Peter Constable were ordering Thai food in Thai was also fun. If he were not spending so much of his life down under he'd be cool to hang out with, I imagine.
And Marc's father John Durdin has probably forgotten more about Lao then I might ever have the opportunity to know ever if I moved to Laos tomorrow and spent the rest of my life there. And I am not just talking about his sorting efforts, which we wouldn't be as good as even if we were working properly. Note that this paragraph has nothing to do with anything, except to point out that his dad impresses me too!
Anyway, I bring up Marc for a reason.
The other day something very cool happened.
Tavultesoft joined the Unicode Consortium as an Associate Member!
In their own words from their site:
Tavultesoft is the developer of a market-leading keyboard mapping software, Keyman. Keyman brings a simple solution to the complexity of typing in a range of languages and scripts. It is the solution for languages that are either unsupported or only partly supported by the operating system. The Keyman product family includes keyboard design tools, Windows-based keyboard mapping, and web-based JavaScript keyboards. Keyman has attracted users from around the globe who both benefit from the software and the keyboard layouts available. Linguistic experts around the globe contribute their expertise and skills to develop keyboard layouts for both common languages and languages that otherwise would have no support on computers. Keyman is now in its 7th release since it was first developed in 1992.
Now Keyman is a product that I think is cooler than MSKLC for several reasons, including the obvious such as the fact that it covers scenarios that MSKLC doesn't, such as Win9x.
Though one of the things that really impresses me is that Marc Durdin of Tavultesoft actually dug in to all of the Text Services Framework interfaces and such and figured them out. Enough to produce a working prodcuct, and enough to be able to push back on Microsoft when they ran into bugs -- which more often than not were actual bugs and limitations in the Text Services Framework!
The people who can dig in to complex components like this (the work of Rick Cameron of Crystal Decisions to support Uniscribe and also to support and encourage the extension of MSLU while it was in early beta under development and there was no information about it is another example) are impressive because the lack of samples and sometimes even documentation does not daunt them.
They know that we are likely full of crap if we claim it's easy since we don't have samples out there, but they go in and figure out the hard stuff anyway.
Plus the many things that Keyman can do -- that MSKLC and Text Based TSF TIPs can't -- make it fairly unique among such tools and required for sensible input methods in more languages than many experienced folks in this area can fathom....
Anyway, enough gushing. Welcome, Tavultesoft, to Unicode, as an associate member!
This blog brought to you by ຟ (U+0e9f, aka LAO LETTER FO SUNG)
Andrew West on 24 Sep 2008 5:30 AM:
Isn't this post's sponsor missing a second aka for the name he would rather be known as?
Michael S. Kaplan on 24 Sep 2008 9:16 AM:
That on almost deserves its own blog, doncha think? :-)
John Cowan on 24 Sep 2008 9:41 AM:
Well, hell, Michael, all that and you don't tell us how to pronounce "Tavultesoft"? I know how to pronounce "Trigeminal", and if I didn't I could look it up.
Andrew West on 24 Sep 2008 9:49 AM:
Yes, I think it definitely deserves its own blog.
Michael S. Kaplan on 24 Sep 2008 9:58 AM:
Hey John, that might be why it is mispronounced more often! :-)
Andrew Durdin on 24 Sep 2008 2:32 PM:
[tɑˈvʊltɛsɔft] is how I would transcribe it, although I'd usually pronounce it [təˈvʊltɪsɔft]
Marc Durdin on 24 Sep 2008 7:08 PM:
Thanks for the welcome Michael :-) Andrew (my brother) has the pronunciation guide right: if you want to show that you understand the linguistic origins of the name, pronounce it [tɑˈvʊltɛsɔft]. If you want say it the same way I do, say [təˈvʊltɪsɔft]. As to the origins, Tavultae [tɑˈvʊltɛ] is a village on the North coast of Papua New Guinea where my family spent some time when I was 13.
We are not only mispronounced, we are also widely misspelled! I've seen Travultesoft, Travultsoft, Tavultsoft, Tavulsoft and worse. Some of these have even been typosquatted :-) Just as well that our product name is easier to spell...
Michael S. Kaplan on 25 Sep 2008 1:14 AM:
I wonder if it is worth trying to buy up the squatters in that case?
Michael S. Kaplan on 25 Sep 2008 1:16 AM:
Andrew [West] -- didn't you write about the FO SUNG/LO LOOT errors already?
Marc Durdin on 25 Sep 2008 10:16 PM:
I have been informed (by my parents) that both Andrew and I got the phonetic transcription of Tavultesoft wrong. Here's what they suggest is the correct pronounciation: [tɑβʊltɛˈsɔft]ǃ Not quite sure how to turn that into a domain name...
John Cowan on 29 Sep 2008 11:55 AM:
Just tell everyone it's a Spanish name: that would be [taβultesoft], which is close enough. Except Spanish doesn't have clusters like [ft]. You can't have everything.
Andrew Durdin on 1 Oct 2008 1:35 PM:
Well, I was going to go all pedantic and mention that the village Tavulte [taβul'te] for which the company is named had different stress and a bilabial fricative; but that doesn't necessarily apply to the name of the company, and I've certainly never heard Marc say [taβul'tesoft].
referenced by