Avestan keyboard for OS X version 1.

0 manual
By Pim Rietbroek
Introduction
In my dealings with many languages and scripts in my daily work in publishing (I work for Brill in Leiden,
the Netherlands), Avestan has struck me as one of the most fascinating language-script combinations. I
do not quite know why this is. It may be just that together with some of my fellow second-year students
of Classics at Leiden University I was taught a related Iranian language, Old Persian, by R.S.P. Beekes, then
Professor of Comparative Indo-European Languages, more or less on a dare: Prof. Beekes, who introduced
us to comparative Indo-European linguistics as part of our regular training, said that because we already
had a grounding in Classical Greek we should have no trouble learning Old Persian in six weeks time. He
invited all who were interested to attend a class the next week, and then he was much surprised to find
about fourteen very sceptical students in the room. Suffice it to say, Old Persian did turn out to be not too
much of a challenge to learn. Unfortunately, the small corpus of Old Persian texts had little of interest to
offer me, not did I have a particular love for comparative linguistics. But I shall always remain grateful to
Prof. Beekes for his example of great scholarship, enthousiasm, and willingness to share his knowledge.
I hereby offer a small contribution to students of Avestan in the form of an Avestan keyboard for OSX.
Ever since the Avestan script was encoded in the Unicode Standard I have been on the lookout for further
support of the script, both in operating systems and text applications, in fonts, and in input software, better to serve Brills authors and readers. As with many historical or minority scripts, much depends on the
willingness of individuals to contribute to support of Avestan, rather than on the large computer companies that furnish the hardware and the software. Unicode-encoded Avestan fonts have become available,
for which the makers must be applauded. But in order for a script to be really alive these days, texts must
be made available for all to read, and that means people have to be able to key them in. Ernst Tremels diligent efforts to provide a keyboard for the Linux operating system seem to have hit an unfortunate snag,
and nothing comparable, I believe, is available on the Windows or the OSX operating systems. Having no
experience in making Windows keyboards but a little in making one for OS X (and only thanks to the excellent Ukelele software!), I thought I should have a go at compiling an OSX Avestan keyboard. The present
version, 1.0, is the first result I offer to others to use.

Avestan keyboard for OS X version 1.0 manual

page 1

Avestan keyboard diagram (ANSI keyboards: mostly used in the U.S.)

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Avestan keyboard for OS X version 1.0 manual

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page 2

Avestan keyboard diagram (ISO keyboards: mostly used outside the U.S.)
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2

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Avestan keyboard for OS X version 1.0 manual

(
9

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page 3