Supporting Nias language on Android smartphones and PCs
Nias traditional wear (Photo: Private archive) The pain and beyond If you have ever typed a lot in Nias language, you must have felt the pain I had had with it. Whether you type on a smartphone screen or on a PC keyboard, the keyboard does not feature the characters ö and ŵ which are frequently found in Nias vocabulary. The existing solution is cumbersome to carry out. On a smartphone keyboard you would get those characters by long-pressing the letter o and w to get letter ö and ŵ respectively. On a PC people usually use the combination shortcuts (like Alt+1945 or whatever). And if you have ever typed long texts in Nias language, you must have known that both solutions are not convenient at all and they basically slow down the typing flow. But that's only one side of the story. Looking further it seems that Nias language is virtually absent from the Internet and social media. People with Nias mother tongue and others with Nias language skills don't communic