Extended Bulgarian keyboard layouts

TL;DR

This paper analyzes and compares Bulgarian keyboard layouts, proposing improvements and an algorithm for symbol placement to enhance usability across different standards and modes.

Contribution

It introduces formal definitions and illustrations of four extended Bulgarian keyboard layouts, including an algorithm for symbol placement to improve user accessibility.

Findings

Proposed an algorithm for symbol placement on keyboards.

Compared traditional, phonetic, and new BDS 5237:2006 layouts.

Provided formal definitions and illustrations for four layouts.

Abstract

The old Bulgarian keyboard standard BDS 5237-78 was developed for use mostly on typewriter machines. The wide distribution of the computers forced the update of this standard. On one hand this is because of the need to support symbols such as the Bulgarian quotation marks, the Cyrillic letter I with grave accent, the long dash, etc. On the other hand the so called "phonetic layout" became popular and this layout is not standartized by BDS. In this work we are analyzing the possibilities to improve the keyboard layout according to BDS 5237-78, as well as the traditional phonetic layout. At the same time we are making a comparison with the new proposed Bulgarian keyboard layout standard BDS 5237:2006. We are proposing an algorithm for placement of additional symbols on the keys of the keyboard in a way that makes easy for the users to find the symbols even when they are not inscripted on the keys. We are giving formal definitions and illustrations of four keyboard layouts - three extended keyboard layouts for typing in "Cyrillic" mode (BDS, traditional phonetic and phonetic according to the new proposed BDS 5237:2006) and one extended layout for typing in "Latin" mode.