No More Boxes!

The release of Apple's iOS 9 on September 16, 2015 focuses less on new features and more on under-the-hood optimizations, as well as battery improvements but in baybayin, this is the finest day. iOS 9 expanded its Unicode range on its System font by utilizing the Google Noto Font which includes Tagalog, Buhid, Hanunoo, and Tagbanwa script. Now it can be seen the baybayin clearly in iPad and iPhone that has iOS 9 version. No more squares or boxes in messaging, messenger and safari browser.

Screenshot in Safari

Screenshot in Safari

Screenshot in Messenger

Screenshot in Messaging

However there is no fully supported third-party baybayin keyboard yet that can directly type the script but it can be done through a separate customized keyboard by Unicode Pad. Simply type in and copy-paste it to desired messaging.

 

Screenshot in Unicode Pad with customized baybayin keyboard

With the inclusion of baybayin in iOS 9, it paved the way to a broader and wider field in cyberspace and communications. More people will be able to use the script for communication and has wider access and exposure to the world. This cemented the script together with the existing scripts like Korean Hangeul, Japanese Katakana/Hiragana, Chinese Hanzi, Thai, Hebrew, Arabic and others, ultimately placing it to a full-pledged living script.

*Updated*

Following the updating of iOS 9.0, third party baybayin keyboards emerges thus typing baybayin in iOS devices made easily. Below is an example and one of the popular third party babayin keyboard application for iOS developed:

Baybayin Basic Chart

There are numerous baybayin charts available but some are not original and with extended developed characters which are unofficial and not standard that could mislead someone who is still new to the script. This one is a remake of the iconic Ilocan syllabary chart also known as Kur-itan taken from the Francisco López typefont of the 1621 Ilocan Doctrina Cristiana (Líbro a naisurátan ámin a bagás ti Doctrina Cristiana nga naisúrat ití líbro ti cardenal agnágan Belarmino quet ináon ti Fr. Francisco López, padre a San Agustín ití sinasantóy). The font used for this remake is the Baybayin Lopez font created by Paul Morrow based on the same typefont.

The above chart first introduces by F. López the utilization of the vowel cancelling cross-virama for the Reformed method of writing. In addition to the chart, there are equivalent marks for comma and period but it can also be use to other punctuation marks such as exclamation point and question mark. Another glyph created by the late Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma is the pamudpod - a vowel cancellation mark virama now accepted by the Mangyan people in Mindoro.

Font creator Norman Delos Santos include pamudpod in his fonts as a proposed replacement for the Spanish cross virama for end/trailing consonants while leaving the +/x virama for leading consonants. This proposed convention further applies to +/x virama to a distinct purpose - for writing foreign words with leading consonants (ex. trabaho, proyekto).

*Note pamudpod glyph taken from Baybayin Modern Sulat font by Norman Delos Santos