ಕೀಲಿಕನ್ನಡ - Kannada Typing Tutor

An interactive typing tutor for four real Kannada layouts. Practise on your own physical keyboard, watch a virtual keyboard light up, and build typing speed - no installation of the actual keyboard layout required.

Documentation

Full docs live in docs/: a tutorial for users, a layout data contract for maintainers, a walk-through for adding a new layout, a serve-and-publish guide, and an explanation of the two typing engines.

Included layouts:

Layout	Type	What it is
ಕೆಜಿಪಿ (kgp)	keymap	The KPRao/KGP/Nudi family - type by sound (k→ಕ, A→ಾ, f→್). Built directly from the KPRao/KGP macOS keyboard layout.
InScript (inscript)	rule-based	The Government of India standard position-based layout.
InScript 2 (inscript2)	rule-based	The updated InScript standard with conjunct and ZWJ/ZWNJ shortcuts on a modifier layer.
Transliteration (transliteration)	rule-based	Phonetic/ITRANS-style typing (k a n n a D a → ಕನ್ನಡ).

The app is split into a generic engine and pure-data layout definitions, so a new layout is just one JSON file plus one line in the registry.

Live structure (plain static files, no build step, no dependencies):

index.html                 - page markup
style.css                   - all styling
app.js                      - generic engine (two strategies) + tutor logic
data/layouts.json           - registry: order, names, descriptions, tags
data/layouts/kgp.json       - KGP keymap (actions/terminators + historic key seq)
data/layouts/inscript.json       - InScript rules (ported from jquery.ime)
data/layouts/inscript2.json      - InScript 2 rules (ported from jquery.ime)
data/layouts/transliteration.json - Phonetic transliteration rules (ported from jquery.ime)

Publish on GitHub Pages

1. Push this repo's main branch (keep the folder structure as-is - app.js fetches data/layouts.json and data/layouts/*.json by relative path).
2. In the repo, go to Settings → Pages.
3. Under Build and deployment, set Source to Deploy from a branch, pick your branch (usually main) and folder / (root).
4. Save. GitHub will give you a URL like https://<username>.github.io/<repo>/ within a minute or two.

That's the whole setup - everything here is static HTML/CSS/JS, so there's no server, no npm install, no build step.

Running it locally before you push

Opening index.html directly by double-clicking (file://…) will not work, because app.js loads the layout JSON via fetch(), which browsers block on the file:// protocol. Serve the folder instead:

python3 -m http.server 8080
# then open http://localhost:8080

or any equivalent static server (npx serve, VS Code's Live Server extension, etc).

What's inside

• Layout picker - in the header, across every tab. Your choice is remembered in localStorage, the virtual keyboards re-render, and all three typing surfaces switch engines immediately.
• Layout tab - the current layout's full keyboard (base + Shift legends), a reference strip for the historic/modifier entries (backquote ` on ಕೆಜಿಪಿ, ⌥ Alternate on the IME layouts), and a live test box that mirrors your physical keyboard. A digit switch on this tab toggles the number row between the layout's Kannada digits (೧೨೩) and Western digits (123).
• Practice tab - a 5-level typing tutor (vowels → consonants → consonant+vowel combinations → words → sentences) with WPM, accuracy, and streak tracking. Targets are Kannada text; the current layout's engine decides what your keystrokes produce.
• Free Type tab - an open canvas with grapheme-aware Backspace (removes one full akshara at a time).
• Unicode tab - all 91 assigned codepoints in the Kannada block, showing whether the selected layout produces each on a key, via a modifier, or not at all (with the keystroke to type it).
• Layout data & review notes - each layout's data/layouts/<id>.json also carries a findings array: the per-layout audit trail (bugs found and fixed, design notes, scope decisions). Kept in the repo only; not surfaced in the portal UI.

Layout data provenance

• data/layouts/kgp.json is a plain extraction of the .keylayout file's keyMap, actions, and terminators tables (US-ANSI printable keys, codes 0–51), plus the historic-letter sequence. It already patches the original file's &x200c; / &x200D; bugs.
• data/layouts/{inscript,inscript2,transliteration}.json are ports of the jquery.ime Kannada rules (Wikimedia), copied byte-for-byte and continuously verified against the upstream sources by a round-trip test. Two deliberate corrections: the InScript F key maps to ಌ (upstream shipped a wrong codepoint), and historic letters are documented on the Alternate/⌥ layer.

Each layout is pinned by a git tag so consumers can depend on a specific definition: kgp-1.0, inscript-1.0, inscript2-1.0, transliteration-1.0. Update a tag only when its layout data changes.

Editing the keyboard data

Layout files are plain JSON. The engine reads a small in-file contract:

• keymap files (kgp): keymap0/keymap1 (code → {type:'output',value} or {type:'state' …}), actions, terminators, historicPrefixCode/historicPrefixChar, historicSeq (keyed by code*2 + shift).
• IME files (the other three): patterns/patterns_x/patterns_shift with jquery.ime semantics - 2-element rules [input, replacement], 3-element [input, contextRegex, replacement]; maxKeyLength and contextLength default to 1/0 if absent.

If the upstream data changes, re-port from the source rather than hand-editing - each file's findings array lists the known quirks the data already accounts for.