The composition approach non-QWERTY keyboard for Balinese script

Advances in digital technology have greatly helped in the digitization of many ancient scripts. We present the details of a project undertaken in the Indonesian island of Bali to develop a comprehensive digital script for the Balinese language with the goal of alleviating the problem of people losing their competence with both the Balinese language and Balinese script. In this paper we introduce the first such a system consisting of a non-QWERTY keyboard layout and its application for the Balinese script of the Balinese language. The aim of the system is to assist teachers and educators in Bali to train students on how to write Balinese script in a natural as well as modern way. The composition approach of the characters in the keyboard layout was obtained through several Balinese language datasets, such as short stories, itihasa (history), proverb, poetry, etc. In addition to the system, our project also included the development of a soft keyboard for desktop and tablet/smartphone environments. Our work contributes to the preservation of the Balinese cultural heritage.