Hi all. I think I should introduce myself first: I am Jon Harald Søby from Norway. I am a global sysop on Wikimedia projects (which means I can help you delete things from Wikipedias with no adins if you need it!), and have been a Wikipedian for over seven years. I am very interested in African topics (esp. languages), and have lived in Tanzania for six months and speak some Swahili. I haven't been to West Africa yet, but hope to go there in not too long!
Now, onto my question. MediaWiki (the software that Wikipedia uses) has an extension called Narayam, which makes it possible to write in scripts other than Latin using a normal Latin keyboard. This is very useful if you are on a computer with no software support for your language, for example in an Internet cafe or if you are in another country or whatever.
Since Akan and Ewe use some characters that are not standard in the Latin alphabet, I think this could be a useful extension for these Wikipedias as well. So that it can be tested, I have one question, however: How is a proper Akan and/or Ewe keyboard set up?
According to this page on Omniglot, the Akan alphabet has two "special" characters, ɛ and ɔ, which are in place of the standard Latin letters q and x. Is that they way it works on keyboards as well? According to the same website, Ewe has even more special characters, which I don't think fit on normal keyboards.
Also, my impression from East Africa is that there isn't really any specific keyboard layout used. I have come across keyboards from languages all over the world, though the usual setting is "US English". Is it the same way in Ghana? In that case, how do you normally type the special letters? Do you use some sort of combination or substitution, like "3" for "ɛ", "C" for "ɔ", or anything like that? If any of you could provide this information I could create a keyboard layout for it, and you can help test it.
--
mvh