Support for using combining diacritics with the Latin script was introduced in Windows XP Service Pack 2. If you are using Windows Vista text requiring combining diacritics will correctly display. Windows Vista contains updated core fonts that support the use of combining diacritics.
To use African languages on your computer, you need to:
Microsoft provide a number of fonts on Windows Vista that may be suitable for various African languages. These include:
Third party fonts that are suitable for a range of African languages include:
Although Microsoft provides input locales for a number of Latin script African languages, there are no unique African language keyboards. African input locales use the French or US keyboard layouts. Although this may suffice for soem of the supported languages, it does not properly support the other languages. For instance Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba do require keyboard layouts, since these languages use combinations of characters unavailable on the US and French keyboard layouts.
It is necessary to locate other input solutions.
As with other versions of Windows, available non-Microsoft keyboard layouts fall into two categories:
MSKLC based keyboards are free but have a number of problems. The layouts that can be designed using MSKLC are limited and restrictive. For effective use of these keyboard layouts, it is important that software and web developers support Unicode normalization and case folding. In order to use a custom keyboard layout, it is necessary to assign the keyboard layout to an existing input locale supported by Windows Vista. In practice this means assigning the keyboard to a completely different language. This may have unexpected consequences.
Tavultesoft Keyman Desktop is a commercial product that allows much more sophisticated and responsive keyboard layouts.
Sites that contain or list keyboard layouts include: