The Cherokee keyboard

Paul sent me this screen shot of the Cherokee keyboard for Macs. (As always you must click on the image to enlarge it.) Here is his description.

"Here's how the built-in OS X Cherokee keyboard works: all four rows of the keyboard (including the number keys) type Cherokee characters, and holding shift gives you a different set of Cherokee characters. I counted 86 glyphs all together. If you need to type a numeral, Command-number key gives you the corresponding numeral (instead of a Cherokee character)."

I am very glad to have this image since I couldn't view the Mac keyboard otherwise. Here is a previous email which I wasn't able to follow up.

"Apple ships my Syllabic and Cherokee syllabic keyboard layouts. QWERTY and otherwise."
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com

So the 86 symbols of Cherokee fit on the keyboard and are input as syllables, one keystroke for each syllabic character. That is a glyph-based syllabic keyboard. Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics also has syllabic keyboards, but with fewer characters that is not so difficult.

The full Cherokee keyboard layout can be viewed here.