Add Bokmål (Norwegian) keyboard

[andrewtavis]

Terms

• I have searched open new keyboard issues
• I agree to follow Scribe-iOS' Code of Conduct
• This issue is about one language, and I've changed the title to reflect this

Language support

Norwegian is another language that has a lot of available data on Wikidata that further has grammar structures that Scribe could really serve. There are three genders - masculine, feminine and neutral, but verb conjugation is more similar to Danish and Swedish meaning that the 2x2 conjugation display would likely be used.

Of note is that there are two written forms of Norwegian - Bokmål and Nynorsk. This issue would focus on Bokmål as there is dramatically more support for it on Wikidata at time of writing (roughly 85% of Norwegians use Bokmål), but another issue to make a Nynorsk keyboard would be welcome 😊

Contribution

I'd be happy to work on this, and it may be focussed on in a future release :)

What's needed

• A Bokmål directory added to Keyboards/LanguageKeyboards that includes a BokmålKeyboardViewController.swift file
• Bokmål language keyboard values and logic added to NBInterfaceVariables.swift in the above directory
• Bokmål language keyboard commands added to NBCommandVariables.swift in the above directory
• Fine tuning the WDQS queries found in Scribe-Data/Data/Bokmål
• Writing formatting Python scripts and adding them to Scribe-Data/Data/Bokmål
• Add Bokmål keyboard specific logic to KeyboardViewController.swift
• Setting up alternate key functions if there are keys that have them that aren't already implemented
• Adding all the formatted JSON data to a Data directory in the new directory and updating the data table in the readme

[andrewtavis]

Word counts via Data/check_language_data.sparql:

type	total
adjective	4269
adverb	107
article	1
noun	19748
preposition	59
pronoun	21
proper noun	872
verb	4705

[andrewtavis]

The ISO 639-1 for Bokmål is nb, so that's what we'd be using for abbreviations.

[gkprasanth]

Can I work on this issue?

[andrewtavis]

Hey @gkprasanth! You'd be welcome to work on this :) This would definitely be a beneficial language to add into Scribe. Do you have experience with Bokmål? It's fine if you don't so long as you understand that there will be some research for how the grammar works.

I'm currently working on another project right now, but should switch back to looking at Scribe next week. At that point I'd have more time to support. For now feel free to ask questions on the process above if you have them 😊

Thanks for reaching out!

[gkprasanth]

I don't have any idea about scribe or
Bokmål. Can you explain me what is the issue exactly and what I need to do? I would really like to contribute to this issue as there have been no responses since when the issue is opened.

[gkprasanth]

I am ready to research or learn anything if needed in order to contribute.

[andrewtavis]

There is a lot to be done for this, and it's all detailed in the What's needed section of the issue. The first three steps are fairly straightforward - making a directory in Keyboards/LanguageKeyboards that has a similar file structure to the ones that are in there now and has files like NBInterfaceVariables.swift and NBCommandVariables.swift. The contents of the files would be similar to those that you can see for other languages. I would likely need to create the directory for you as that's adding an embedded keyboard app to Scribe, but then you could copy some of the information from other languages over and we could research how the information needs to change.

I could add that new app for you in the next few days if that sounds good. Aside from that, the question is how much Swift or Python you know. Would be happy to give you some pointers on either, but Swift is what the keyboard app is written in, and Python is how the data we get from Wikidata is manipulated. I can also send along some resources for learning those languages if you'd like to practice a bit and we can be in touch from there!

[gkprasanth]

Thank you so much, @andrewtavis, for your kindness. I am familiar with Python's syntax, but I am not familiar with Swift. If you could provide me with the resources as you said, it would be really helpful. As I've already stated, I'm willing to learn anything to be able to contribute.

[andrewtavis]

Sounds great, @gkprasanth! The data process for this should be able to help you learn some more Python, but first I need to get it to that point. I need to catch up with some other issues, but I'll write to you here next week 😊

[gkprasanth]

Okay done. Till then do you want me to learn on work on something? Or should I just clone the project and look at the source code?

[andrewtavis]

I'd say cloning the project and checking out the source code would be enough for now. Specifically the Python work is actually done in Scribe-Data. You can check the Bokmål directory there to see the examples of the words we'd be getting out. In each of the directories we'd need to write Python scripts to format the data extracted from Wikidata appropriately, with there being tons of examples for the other languages that Scribe supports :)