New big projects ahead: Nias language projects

In the past three months a lot of things happened, but there will be a lot in the future. Last year I started the Nias Keyboard Project, a project to provide Nias typical characters, that are not available on normal keyboard (smartphones and PCs). That's done and the app has been available on Google Play for a few months.

That led me to create a dictionary and a language extension for AnySoftKeyboard, the truly open-source Android keyboard project. While I was trying to figure out how to write a hunspell affix file for Nias language (would be needed for the automatic spelling check on the PC), I realised another step is needed: to set the standard of the language itself (or at least a reference I can work on). 

And that led me to form a group of enthusiasts to discuss various topics on Nias language.

The WA group finally agreed on a five year plan (2020-2025) to document, to set standards and to promote Nias language.

In June I realised that it was a huge task to compile new words and keep them somewhere accessible to all group members and public. So I decided to start the Wiktionary Nias project, where I can enter the entries directly and can be edited by the group members.

What I didn't realise was that that would take a lot of time. Therefore the past 3 months I had spent on setting up the Wiktionary Nias and contributing to Wikipedia Nias! And it's working fine now. It's still in the incubator phase (https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wt/nia/Olayama), but soon it will be official and have its own domain at nia.wiktionary.org. 

Meanwhile I want to use an old dictionary and a grammar book that are surprisingly still fresh. I managed to OCR that dictionary and proof-read the results, which again took a lot of time. Luckily it's completed and I have started using the dictionary as the reference for new entries.

So a lot of things have happend, but a lot of things still need to happen. How exciting.